Or Just download Japanese podcast . I use Podcast addict app and in search engine put ポッドキャスト and you should get Japanese podcasts where people talk everyday language , plus you can set speed so if it’s too fast you can slow down and hear better. You should listen at least few hours everyday(One caution from my Japanese friend is to be aware that female use different forms and as a man you don’t wanna sound like a girl in Japan so I just rotate podcasts between those hosted by girls or guys, unless they are mixed then it’s ok) . I don’t understand 90% of what they talk about( I’m still beginner) but my ear is getting tuned to the real speech . Mix it with regular studies vocab, grammar etc
Other thing I use is NHK easy news, you can play speech bot( or whatever they are called ) plus they have furigana . I listen once then read it out loud couple times ( speech is muscle memory , so you gotta speak) and also if your are on mac you can set speech to text and basically open any Japanese website highlight it and “alt+esc” and nice Japanese girl will read it for you ( I think you can set up two women voices)
The other thing I do is watching Japanese dramas ( forget anime and manga they use made up words and You don’t wanna sound like some otaku) I like those called asadora (morning dramas) since they are short ,around 15 min so you can watch once with subs and second without and focus on listening only.
At the beginning of my japanese journey I used the german version of Japanese for busy people (Japanisch im Sauseschritt) and it held me back for a long time. It only explained things very superficially and the further I got with it the more I had to consult other sources, because it was either poorly explained in that chapter or poorly explained earlier, so there was no way to make it come together.
So for some time I thought I just had no talent for japanese until I discovered Genki which put me back on track!
(I have never used the original english Japanese for busy ppl so I don’t know how good that is)
Hi! Can you please give me the link to the Russian101 video where you spotted the said mistake, I’d like to check it out.
I did the whole of Japanese for busy people too, took a practise test for n5 and couldn’t do it at all. Then had to restart completely with Genki which has been great. I had a look at Japanese for busy people text book today just to remember what it was like and still can’t believe how little they explained - utterly rubbish, waster of money and time.
Rosetta Stone also is terrible. Genki all the way!
well, here are some of the people involved, the stuff I’m listening to is hosted by naomi sensei. I think this must be old though because Eric is not on and he cohosts newbie season 4. I much prefer him to Peter who is too gushy. Newbie season 4 is a good place to start.
It depends. This was my tutor and she was absolutely amazing, definitely more than qualified.
Yeah, that thread had a link to a form to apply to be an alpha tester. I think they’ve closed it now - but their current estimated completion date for the course is May 18, then I think they release it to a wider range of beta testers before the public release.
To be honest, one of the things I like most about Wanikani is that it’s very specific with its claims: it will teach you kanji, and some vocabulary based on the kanji, and that’s it. In contrast, even though there’s a lot that I like about duolingo as a supplementary resource, but their claim that completing their activities makes you “X%” fluent in a language is what I consider massively overstating what their product can do.
I’d be interested to know what claims you feel Wanikani makes that aren’t true?
The big one people usually go on about it “2,000 kanji. 6,000 vocabulary words. In just over a year.” Yes it’s possible to complete Wanikani that fast, but the majority do not and this oversells the time estimation.
I’d say the guide oversells what you should be able to do at each level, you won’t be doing any of those things with also studying grammar a significant amount and it glances over that. It makes it sound like you get to X level and you will be able to read Y, and people get on here and act like that sound be true all the time.
All in all Wanikani isn’t overselling what it does too much, though people often seem to think “If I do Wanikani for 1 year I’ll be able to read anything in Japanese!!!”
Textfugu on the other hand…they had good intentions on delivering those promises.
Marketing is marketing, I try to evaluate a product on what it actually does and not what the marketing oversells…because everyone oversells everything.
I don’t really get why people complain about the time thing… WK can’t force you to be disciplined.
Note: I’m not saying that if you go slower you are by default not disciplined. But if you want to go fast, and have the means to go fast, but don’t… it’s your fault.
It’s just a way of selling makes it sound like getting done in a year is the normal time, not the fastest possible speed requiring use of reorder scripts and a very high accuracy rate. Further down on the page it changes to a year and a half, which I feel is probably a better estimate, but not as catchy sounding.
Well, people also quibble about the meaning of “learn”. You can guru everything in just over a year, but no one could burn them all that quickly, it’s not physically possible. “Just over a year” and “a year and a half” are the minimums for all guru and all burn, depends how you want to look at it.
At that point you could then start arguing over if burning something really means you learned it or not.
I’m also bitter that I am going to miss the 1 year mark, but am trying to make it by the year and a half.
It depends on how fast you work. Some people complete the main levels (1-50) in just over a year, which is very fast. There’s also bonus content to think about (levels 51-60). Those levels will take another month or two to complete.
For most dedicated students, finishing all 60 levels in 1.5-2 years is a reasonable goal. You may go faster, or slower, but it all depends on your pace. Considering that most Japanese learners using “traditional” methods take 10+ years to do the same, we think a couple of years isn’t that bad at all.
Even going at a somewhat relaxed pace of 10 days per level will allow you to burn everything on WaniKani in about two years. Seems pretty good to me.
My current minimum time to level 60 is 1 year, 1 month, and 2 days. Even in the more likely outcome that it’s something like 1 year, 1 month, and 15 days or something, I’m comfortable calling that “a little over a year.” And since I joined they sped up the pace.
Mostly the point was they list the time estimate as multiple different things depending on where you look, but on the main selling page its “Just over a year”. The guide section stating what you should be able to do at each levels seems to convince people that will be able to read x by y, (though is does mention you need to study grammar). It’s just marketing and there is nothing wrong with that.
Fair enough, I do agree that most people aren’t going to be able to complete WK in that time frame. I’m very much “team taking it slow” so I don’t even expect to hit level 60 until I’ve been on here at least three times as long.
@Learnme Sure! Learn the Top 25 Must-Know Russian Phrases! - YouTube - here’s a mistake in ‘не подскажИте’. The stress would be on И, and the correct word is ‘не подскажете’.
Russian Listening Comprehension - Getting a Gym Membership in Russia - YouTube - We don’t say “Пользователи” утреннего абонемента, I never heard it at least. It sounds like ‘users’, like computer users.
Russian Listening Comprehension - Getting to the Airport in Russia - YouTube - this video is a catastrophe:D ‘Плата очень дешевая’. It sounds wrong, we would say “Проезд дешевый”.
And not to mention the guy’s wrong pronunciation, accent, intonations and woman’s really high-pitched voice. It’s not really appropriate in ~middle class, you can talk slowlier and not so high, well, I think it must be the same in other countries too.
In the same one (1-30) - “трансфёр”. Well, even if may be not right, we usually say ‘трАнсфер’. Wiki says that both can be right - Трансфер — Википедия
In the same one (1-40) - “Тогда вы можете пойти этим путем”. No-one talks like that!
That sounds like ‘You can go this way/route’ If you use “Воспользоваться” instead of “пойти” it may sound better, but this ‘путем’ is still not 100% good. ‘Тогда вы можете рассмотреть эту возможность’ may be kinda good, but not entirely. Why would you even need to say anything there?
Russian Listening Comprehension - Talking to a Supplier in Russian - YouTube - Intonations are crap throughout the whole video. ‘200 единиц свитеров’, you can say that without ‘единиц’ in the everyday life lol.
In the same one (1-20) - “Нам нужны маленькие свитера первыми” - It may be ‘В первую очередь нам нужны маленькие свитера’ but not the way they said it. ‘Я сожалею о таком коротком сроке’. No-one talks like that, that’s just wrong.
Russian Listening Comprehension - Preparing For a Russian Business Meeting - YouTube - ACCENT. Why would he use ‘ты’, but okay. For the whiteboard we use not ‘ручки’ but ‘маркеры’, at least I never heard it.
Russian Listening Comprehension - Giving Back to the Community in Russia - YouTube - I. Laughed. So. Hard. ‘Опыт лидерства’?? Really? The guy isn’t shy at all lol
And… “САДИТ с детками деревья”. Just no. No. ‘САЖАЕТ’. Садит - is NOT appropriate, it’s wrong though the mistake is quite common amidst native speakers.
These were just the videos I randomly clicked and laughed on. And that’s why I said that I hope there aren’t that many mistakes with jpod101. (The absolute beginner for russian is awful btw)
Language materials aimed at beginners almost always sound strange to native speakers. They are abnormally simplified chunks of language. I can’t comment on JapanesePod or RussianPod, but that’s just something that is common. Little things like unusual word choice or slightly stiff grammar are things beginners are taught, because they aren’t ready to jump in head first yet. Just a thought.
I trust you if you say the accent or intonation is wrong, but little things aren’t always mistakes.
I totally understand that, but in rpod101 they say and use phrases that do not exist or simply gramatically wrong. If I’d pointed out all little things that would be the whole video itself. I know, I’m not a teacher, I know they have non-native guys and hopefully people won’t write those phrases down or learn them, that’s all that concerns me