Bryce is Learning Japanese

In preparation for my departure to Japan, I’ve been making an effort to learn Japanese over the last few months. I am a bit disappointed with how little Japanese I can speak, but that has more to do with the lack of time put into studying than anything else.

The main focus of my studying generally involves Rosetta Stone, which if you haven’t heard of, can be found here. I like this program because it is the closest that I’ll get to a full immersion into the language without actually being in Japan. The lessons are all in Japanese, but makes use of pictures and prompts in a way that is quite intuitive in learning a language.

There are a variety of lessons that are geared towards comprehension, vocabulary building, pronunciation, reading, and a bit of writing. The main benefits from what I can tell are in being able to comprehend spoken Japanese and my pronunciation of the language. the reading and writing is less of a focus in the program – or at least has been slower for me to develop.

How does Rosetta Stone work? A pretty standard lesson type involves several images and a spoken prompt. After the prompt is spoken, you click on the image that best represents what you’ve heard. It is an interesting system of learning because it forces me to rely on what I already know and then builds upon that knowledge through new associations.

For example, I will hear a phrase like “otokono hito wa mizu a nonde shimas” (I apologize, but my spelling is probably terrible). There will be about 4 images to choose from: a boy eating, a man drinking, a girl eating, and a woman drinking. I may not know what “mizu a nonde shimas” means, but I do know that “otokono hito” translates to “man.” It may seem too easy to just select the image with the man in it (who happens to be drinking a glass of water), but at the same time, I’m building an association between the phrase “mizu a nonde shimas” and a person drinking water. Eventually, after a variety of lesson types, I am able to recognize this association without the other distinctions in the image. You can actually try a quick demo of this here – although I think the demo is based on learning Arabic.

This style of learning can take some getting used to, but after some practice, you will be amazed at how hearing the language and speaking it while being engaged in these (usually) easy tasks will allow you to intuitively comprehend aspects of the language.

I should also mention that the reading and writing part of Rosetta Stone focuses primarily on the Hiragana alphabet, with some introduction to Katakana. You can however modify it to communicate in Kanji, but I’m not sure if the reading and writing training will accommodate to this.

Just a quick note about price – the program can be quite expensive. I think that to buy all three levels of difficulty would cost over $600 (CAN). You can buy the levels separately – I think they cost about $300 each, but it’s cheaper to buy them in bundles. Instead of buying the actual program however, I bought a subscription for about $250 that lets me use the program online for 6 months – at any level of difficulty. I figured that this is the best deal for me because it’s the cheapest and by the time my subscription is up, I will be in Japan (and therefore have quite a wealth of resources for learning the language). Although this may seem pricy, I figure that any course that you sign up for will be at least $300 for one term. Here is a link to their actual prices (in US Dollars).

***Also, don’t order right from their website. Email them first and ask if they have any promotions going on. You should be able to get a 10% discount regardless of your situation. You can also check these sites out for coupon codes and more discount information:
http://www.rosettastone.com/offer/cj09
http://www.retailmenot.com/view/rosettastone.com.***


In general, I find that Rosetta Stone is less geared towards reading and writing. My next posting will discuss a bit about how I cope with this aspect of the Japanese Language.