Pimsleur Japanese - Pimsleur Japanese

The Japanese Language - Nihongo

Japanese (Nihongo) is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages, but its overall relationships with other languages remains controversial. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of speaker and listener. The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system.

The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of scripts: Chinese characters called kanji, and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet, ro-maji, is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Western style Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace.

Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese, German and Dutch have also been influential.

Learning Japanese with the Pimsleur Japanese audio lessons is fast and has the advantage that you do not have to learn the Japanese script first. Students who urgently need to become fluent in Japanese for every day conversations, travel etc. love the Pimsleur Japanese courses.

Pimsleur Japanese

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What customers say about the Pimsleur JAPANESE audios:

Essential...if you know how to use it.

I have purchased a number of Japanese language learning books, all producing poor results. The primary issue, for me, with most language learning programs is lack of practical context. In many cases, after learning how to say "hello, goodbye, please and thank you", the next challenge is learning how to say "The dog is on the chair", or something equally irrelevant. I have traveled many places, and yet, perhaps surprisingly, I've never been in a situation where I thought to myself "I really wish I could say 'the dog is on the chair' right now."

The Pimsleur Comprehensive Language program provides a practical context for the learning. They have made the realization that it is in fact possible to teach sentence structure and grammar while using phrases that might actually come in handy.

The proof for me came on my most recent Tokyo trip. On previous trips, I have been stuck searching for people who can speak English, despite the many hours I've logged with language programs. On this trip, however, I was able to communicate in Japanese, thanks to Pimsleur (I am currently halfway through Pimsleur Comprehensive Japanese II). I was able to order a bus ticket to Shinjuku from the airport, check into my hotel, and ask for directions several times while trying to navigate the extensive Tokyo metro system. And again, as opposed to other language methods, I was actually prepared to comprehend the responses to my inquiries. Because I had learned sentence structure and certain critical word forms, I was even able to understand conversations outside the boundaries of what is learned in the Pimsleur method.

I also like the fact that, rather than needing to dedicate time to sit down with a book and study, I get all my studying done on the drive to work, and on the way back home. It has become something I look forward to, without adding any time to my schedule.

The main drawback is the lack of writing development. Especially with Japanese, which uses four writing systems (hiragana, katakana, kanji and good ole' arabic letters), learning to read is essential. I purchased a book specifically devoted to learning to write in hiragana and katakana, and it has proven to be a good supplement to the Pimsleur method. Guide to Learning Hiragana & Katakana

I recommend using Pimsleur as a primary source of study, with supplements such as the book referenced above to fill in the gaps. With this approach, Pimsleur has been the most effective language learning method I've used. -- C. Wright, Santa Clara, CA, USA