Beginning to learn Japanese

i haven’t been writing what i’ve actually been doing. i’m going to catch up here, and from now on try and do more frequent note-taking on the steps i follow. then i can reflect on what i’d do differently.

for example, i wish i had started by simply reading these four articles, which help describe the gap between English and Japanese.

• Peter Payne’s Overview of the Japanese Language, as well as Japanese grammar guide. Entire Guide contains 8 different articles. Easy to digest!
• Particles vs. sentence patterns and also about Japanese sentences. These are also easy to digest, and cover differences in a little more detail.
• Japanese for the western brain; uses romaji at the moment. I found it helpful to transcribe as I was reading (using my handy dandy computer).
• http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ Very thourugh, uses Kanji, with inconsisent kana transcriptions. As a beginner I stopped when it got over my head.

i’d have started out with a better general understanding of Japanese. i had to look around alot to find out that these were, IMHO, the most useful articles available online.

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