If you had two months to learn, what would you focus on?

Japanese Language
#22

I use ToRGuard with the private IP service .Tried a whole bunch before without the private IP thing… just to have the IP blocked after few attemps.

#23

of course you need to understand things on a fundamental level however what you wrote is bad advice.

NO amount of factual knowledge will ever enable you to speak or understand.

#24

Pimsleur Japanese.

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#25

Hmmmm i guess that i’d try with all my might to be the most conversationally fluent that I can finding a tutor or something. I’d only learn the most basic kanji and everything else with kana and romaji as I’m supposedly in a hurry.

My goals would be to be able to have basic conversations, to express my needs and to be able to travel around. I believe that two months is enough to learn the basics.

So yeah I’d rather be unable to read stuff but to be able to have a normal conversation, and be able to ask for help.

#26

If I had to pick one thing to do for 2 months to get some very basic, very crude base for communication, I’d say do audio lessons. Japanesepod101, Michel Thomas. Also work on vocab. You won’t get very far and probably won’t understand much, but it’s a start, and the audio will help you get a feel for spoken language.

#27

I’m not sure what you mean by factual knowledge? What I mean is that instead of memoring 私はカナダ人です and such set phrases one should focus on learning what は and です mean, at least in a broad sense, and how that connects to what they do know right now. This may be at odds with what many language teaching programs say but is the most efficient in my experience.

#28

factual knowledge is factual understanding of how stuff works. e.g. grammar, the kanji a word uses, it’s phonetic spelling.

i am not saying it’s wrong to learn those. in fact it is essential to learn those but it won’t help you to become fluent at speaking, reading or writing. you can only do those by directly practising them.

#29

Yeah I agree, which is why I said that practicing said knowledge with actual conversation was “especially important”. But there’s nothing to practice if you’ve only learned situational “practical” set phrases.

#30

If people just want to learn to get around when they travel there and only have a few months, I usually advise the following:

  • Common vocab, numbers, and useful phrases and phrase parts (~がありますか？、いくらですか？、～をください, ～はどこですか, この、これ、その、それ、あれ）
  • Kana (to read train station names if no romaji is available and menus)
#31

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