Beginning to learn Japanese

i’m trying to learn the kana through writing. i’m using A Guide to Learning Hiragana and Katakana (Tuttle Language Library) and starting with hiragana. for review i’m either going to make my own flashcards, or i was thinking i could actually do it in flash, and make electronic ones with audio.

then it dawned on me, someone must have done this already. there’s many sites to learn the kana, many use javascript. but i want the sound as well. and often the sounds are separate sound files, and at least in my browser, you’re taken to another page. also, i’m looking for something i could use off-line. so the ideal kana programme would:

• be an all-in-one package to play offline
• have a chart with audio
• show or demonstrate stroke order
• show words using the kana you just learned
• have some kind of fun game or activity to challenge

best of the pack, i think is DoKana. i’ve only tried the demo, and i found it helpful. how it works: you click on and hear each kana sound, displayed in the standard grid. the ‘exercises’ are more like audible flashcards (not a game) which bring together the sounds you’ve just heard to make words. you get to see them try to say them outloud, then click to hear the native speaker and learn the meaning.

the demo only shows the vowels, k sounds, and s sounds (both hiragan and katakana). which is fine for me, because i only did the vowels yesterday, and i’m starting on K and S today. you can limit the exercises to words which begin wiith vowels or ones that begin with k or s.

on repeating these exercises i started knowing the meaning of the words, and being able to pronounce them! fancy that, i just learned how to say ’station’: eh-ki!

the same software engineer made a Kana Quiz using SVG. but i’m not ready for that yet.

other kana learning sites i found:
- http://www.kanachart.com/ is a very cute and fun site. has mnemonic devices for remmbering the kana, for example showing ‘ka’ turn into someone doing karate. but the audio is from linked .wav files which lead my browser to another page, just a little interference. and it gives examples of words with these kana in them.

- CosCom has linked mp3 files in another frame so it’s not as distracting. the drills also show stroke order which is very good. it also has double consonants. this is a close second, but it’s not all-in-one. they sell a CD-ROM for learning Japanese which you can demo.

as a refresher, i don’t think i can go wrong with good old flash cards. this site has flash cards to download and instructions to use them

I’ll keep adding more to http://del.icio.us/heather/kana”

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2005 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Learning Methods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.