Learning Japanese with Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone

Japanese is a language that is currently spoken by more than 100 million inhabitants of Japan, as well as Japanese natives living in Hawaii and in North and South America.

It is also widely spoken as a second language by Chinese and Korean natives who lived under Japanese occupation until just a few years ago.

There are three categories of words that exist in the Japanese language. Native Japanese words constitute the largest of these three categories.

The next category is those words which were originally borrowed from China in earlier history.

The smallest category consists of words which were borrowed in modern times from other languages such as English as well as a few words that hail from other Asian languages.

The Japanese language has an open syllable sounds pattern.

The Japanese language uses many word orders. The one inflexible order however is the verb. In the Japanese language the verb must appear at the sentence’s end. The core element of the sentence is the verb simply because the verb expresses actions or events which reference the other words.

This core is typically referred to as the head of a sentence. The Japanese language always places the head of the sentence as the end. Unlike many other languages, the verb in Japanese does not indicate number or gender. The same form for the verb is used with both plural and singular subjects and there is never any gender distinction.

The verb simply inflects for tense, negation, mood and aspect.

This is not as confusing as it may sound. Learning Japanese is just as easy as learning any other foreign language. The thing to remember is to focus on what you are learning to ensure that you retain the information for use when you become fluent. If you are planning to enlist the aid of language programs then you can effectively teach yourself to speak Japanese.

Many people have found that language learning programs give them a wonderful resource for mastering a foreign language, without paying the high cost of taking local college courses. Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur are two of the most popularly chosen programs for learning foreign languages today.

Both offer wonderful methods of teaching Japanese. The Rosetta Stone program is a computer software program that uses images and other aspects to help master the language. However, this program does not offer the speaking ability of the Pimsleur program.

Pimsleur uses CD’s which you can take with you to listen to in the car or on a plane if needed. When used together, these two programs can have you speaking Japanese, as well as reading and writing it fluently with ease.
As with any foreign language learning you may feel overwhelmed when you first begin.

It is not uncommon for those learning a new language to feel apprehensive about what they are about to undertake. You can learn to speak Japanese fluently as well as read and write the language if you remember to devote the needed time to your lessons and above all relax and have fun with learning this new skill.