Learning Japanese thru the internet vs. class?

[Charizard★]

Just wanted to see which was harder and more beneficial in the end, learning thru the internet or going to a class? I've been interested in taking Japanese for a while, but my school doesn't offer it, my local community college doesn't offer it and the nearest place where I can learn it is about an hour away, which is a bit too far. So, which do you think/know is harder?

 

[Cello]

I've never tried learning through a class, but you can always try out LiveMocha.
It's basically Rosetta Stone but free and allows you to either take their online courses or learn from one of their community volunteer teachers.

As an online college student, we're not required to learn a second language, but they recommend we try to practice a second language. This is where they pointed us to in order to learn one. It's been very beneficial so far, as we can work on our own schedule, and of course it's free.

 

[Shinigami_]

Never tried both, really..Japanese is; with all respect, probably the most complicated language I've ever heard. the words just have so many different meanings! I'm nervous to try unless I'm absolutely sure I know the language because I don't want to unintentionally insult someone.

 

[digi-kun]

The problem as far as that goes is not so much "oh, I accidentally mispronounced and swore" as much as that Japanese has multiple different levels of respect, and depending where you are, you're expected to speak in certain ways.

If you have a lot of time and money, college definitely works, especially if you have the option to take it as an elective towards your degree. As far as harder goes, I would probably say classes would be harder because you're getting a grade for it, and after the first semester or so, the pace picks up dramatically.

 

[Charicific]

Japanese is fairly easy to be honest, especially when it comes to grammar. The way I learned part of my Japanese is via an Android app......not kidding O_O

 

[Esper]

The most important thing to have when learning Japanese is... someone else who already knows Japanese (or at least a lot more than you do) so you can ask lots and lots of questions. You can teach yourself a lot on your own if you have a good foundation, but I think having a teacher and a group of people at your same level gives you a great chance to build that foundation. They'll ask things that you didn't think of, make suggestions, and overall be extra heads helping you learn. I had a teacher who was very hands-on about teaching, having us talk to each other, get up and move around and act things out as we were speaking and listening to that we got that kind of muscle memory thing going on. It really helped.

I can remember trying to teach myself a little Japanese before taking classes, and honestly I floundered a lot. Yeah, classes are pretty intense because you're being graded, but you're also being pushed to improve a lot. My teacher said that if you don't use Japanese at least a little every day you start to forget and stagnate. Happened to me and I'm still recovering from it. The language just needs a lot of work to learn.

tl;dr classes, definitely the way to go

 

[Alistair]

It especially helps to talk to native speakers to some extent, whether they be a supplement to the instructor or an instructor who is a native speaker and has also had formal education in the language (some university instructors can be native speakers, but have no formal education in their language and may have difficulty or skip explaining some complexities). There are some things that even fluent instructors can miss (especially in regards to some status-related speech and contextual words), and native speakers can really be helpful in regards to proper pronunciation and accent training.

You can start out with self-education, if only to get an introduction to the language, but I wouldn't suggest relying solely on it. Especially if you want to rely on language software such as Rosetta Stone (which is really poor for Japanese, in my opinion). Pimsleur is a good tool to get started with, and learning the kana before going in to a class really helps, too (flash cards and the fact that the kana are phonetic make this so easy, it's not funny).

 

[Cherrim]

If you have no other options, learning it on your own honestly isn't all that hard. It's easy up to a point but after that, it's really difficult to grasp the harder subjects without a mentor there to answer your questions or correct any bad habits you have.

When I was younger, I started teaching myself Japanese in the year or two before I managed to find classes. I ended up learning everything that was taught in the entire first year of class before I attended so I absolutely breezed through it and got a 99%. But then I caught up with what I'd been able to teach myself and my marks levelled off to 80%. (I also stopped trying as hard by then, haha.) Now that I've been out of classes for many years, my Japanese is okay but I find it very difficult to learn anything new and even the knowledge I do have is kind of shaky and I don't feel I have a very good foundation of a lot of it. I'm very excited to be going back into Japanese classes in university now that they've figured out where to place me.

So essentially, you can probably get the basics down no problem but you'll probably come to a point where self-study just isn't enough and you'll need someone to teach and mentor you in the language so I'd just look for classes asap if you're really interested.

 

[SevenShirokami]

Never tried both, really..Japanese is; with all respect, probably the most complicated language I've ever heard. the words just have so many different meanings! I'm nervous to try unless I'm absolutely sure I know the language because I don't want to unintentionally insult someone.

It's not just Japanese that has words with so many meanings. I mean, think of it this way. It's just like the English word "jam." There's jam as in jelly, but there's also jam as in the verb that means "to shove." For example: "I want to jam the sandwich into my mouth" is different from "I at the jam sandwich."
In any language, there are going to be a lot of words that have a lot of different meanings or translations. In fact, if you asked a student taking English as his foreign language, he would probably tell you that English is harder than his native language because of all the different ways to speak. Like, the bast tense of "run" is "ran," but the past tense of "jog" is "jogged," not jag or runned.
Besides, if you unintentionally insult someone, they will probably be able to recognize from how nervous you are that it's not your native language, and from what I understand of Japan, they would probably chuckle lightheartedly and politely correct you.


ANYWAYS, I'm not really one to comment, because I'm largely self-teaching through books and a few Android apps. It works for me because I can learn at my own pace (so it's a bit like learning online). However, it lacks the one-on-one advantage of having a live class or tutor. You miss that human element of it. Watching plenty of subbed anime will quickly get you familiar with short, common phrases.
Another problem that I've encountered teaching myself through books and apps is that most of them are for travelling, not really for someone that is honestly trying to learn to speak a language for the sake of speaking the language.

Personally, I would recommend trying a free online course, buying plenty of books/downloading several apps on the subject, and maybe trying it out in a classroom to see what suits you best.
However, trying it out in the classroom would also have the disadvantage of being incredibly stressful because you are getting a grade for it, and you aren't necessarily learning at your own pace.

 

[Scuki]

Well I guess you could learn easy phrases through anime... But you need to watch A LOT! XD I can say only really simple, common ones... Like ohayo or O genki desu ka? I really want to learn japanese but I am not the type who learns languages easily... like french ugh XP How i hate thee XD

 

[Mentalii]

I tried to learn Japanese online 4 years ago ... But I abandonned. The language is too difficult, it's a completely different logic than the europeans languages I am used to.

 

[Corintio22]

As in every language, is always better to learn it through a class, man. I did a year of Japanese until I quit, but the classes were good!

And I read someone posting that Japanese is the hardest language. Finnish or Russian are harder, I guess. And, for sure, Thai is harder.

 

[droomph]

^No, classes don't give you the speaking skills necessary to make it useful, because out of 36 people only one can actually speak it. But they do help so 日本語のクラスは大事です。 yeah.

So yeah, try watching Japanese anime (or any cartoon from any language, if you dare) to absorb the culture and kinda understand Japanese. Then when you feel like it you can watch it with subtitles.

日本語は難しくないですよ。日本語はとってもやさしいです。

 

[Lilienne]

Japanese learning classes are horrible. At least with the Internet, you can actually look up how people converse in public, rather than learn the super-special-awesome formal format you learn in a class. It's way, way slower.

As I know from personal experience with people who try to use what they learn in their classes on me, it just makes me want to facedesk everytime I hear them talk. The classes might work...eventually...but really, you're better off learning from someone who actually knows Japanese or learn on your own.

It works the other way around, too. There was an English learning class in Japan, and my six year old sister corrected their English. They actually took back their welcome sign to fix it.

 

[Esper]

Japanese learning classes are horrible. At least with the Internet, you can actually look up how people converse in public, rather than learn the super-special-awesome formal format you learn in a class. It's way, way slower.

As I know from personal experience with people who try to use what they learn in their classes on me, it just makes me want to facedesk everytime I hear them talk. The classes might work...eventually...but really, you're better off learning from someone who actually knows Japanese or learn on your own.

It works the other way around, too. There was an English learning class in Japan, and my six year old sister corrected their English. They actually took back their welcome sign to fix it.

I don't understand why or how you could be taking classes from someone who didn't know Japanese.

My own Japanese classes were taught by a native speaker who taught us a wide range of ways of speaking and different contexts to use them. So we did learn some of the formal, stiffer stuff in the beginning so we had a little foundation, but in a few months we covered a ton of other things and for those of us who stuck with it we even studied regional accents and expressions and so on.

I guess I had an exceptional teacher then.

As in every language, is always better to learn it through a class, man. I did a year of Japanese until I quit, but the classes were good!

And I read someone posting that Japanese is the hardest language. Finnish or Russian are harder, I guess. And, for sure, Thai is harder.

According to the Foreign Service Institute of the US Department of State an English speaker is going to have an easier time with Russian or Thai compared to Japanese.

CLICK HERE FOR FUN INFOGRAPHIC.

 

[Kura]

I would prefer classes because I find it hard to quiz myself sometimes :c.. I also would like someone to talk to.. to try to make a conscious effort to understand and look up new vocabulary and stuff for everything I want to say. I just find it hard to do it on my own, not because I lack motivation, but because I wouldn't know which direction to push myself when it came to harder stuff like particles (wa vs. ga and etc..) :c I just wish I had someone to talk to and practice; which I could do with a teacher, but it's hard on my own.

My Japanese Coach for DS wasn't bad.. but then it was like it got to a point where you could pass a part that you didn't understand fully yet and I got stuck :c.. Oh well.. Maybe I should pick it up again because I like.. forgot half the hiragana and like all the katakana since it's been so long ;o;

 

[droomph]

CLICK HERE FOR FUN INFOGRAPHIC.

I'm very sad that they didn't include German. VERY SAD. >:(

Also, if you do well in math you can expect languages to be easy. That and the mentality that you think languages are eeeasssy.

For example, if you repeatedly think to yourself, "Chinese is hard" you're going to have a horrible time with Chinese. However, if you think "I can do this Chinese thing!" you'll be psychologically more receptive to the words and memorization and all that. And no, I don't need scientific proof to do this because you'll see for yourself once you try.

 

[Lilienne]

Let me rephrase what I mean by learning from someone who knows the language. If you learn, say, English in a non-English speaking country, chances are they will be teaching you a more archaic form of the language, but they certainly can't prepare you for the slang or the new words or new phrasing people use now. Whereas someone who learnt the language because they grew up in the environment will be better equipped to teach you a more updated version of the language, so to speak.