(Part 2) Best foreign dictionaries & thesauruses according to redditors
We found 3,232 Reddit comments discussing the best foreign dictionaries & thesauruses. We ranked the 1,177 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Post Genki II Stuff
A good starting point is the app LingoDeer and its Japanese practise sessions. The first course is free and has a ton of content. Its practise focuses on teaching kana, grammar and building up vocabulary with a variety of guessing games so it's a very natural and entertaining way of learning. This makes it better than a lot of the language apps out there since their main focus is usually flashcard learning and hard memorisation.
Beyond that, Tae Kim's Japanese grammar is considered by many to be a fantastic way to learn the language. It builds up the necessary fundamentals for learning the language in a rational, intuitive way that makes sense in Japanese. The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view (which means you think in japanese rather than english).
If you want to get a textbook the Genki guides are considered by many to be the quintessial classroom learning book. Japanese for Busy People is also a good one if you don't have a lot of spare time.
Beyond that, watch Japanese tv without subtitles to get used to them speaking. Japanese Children's tv is a great way to go about it. Try watching something like Chi's Sweet Home without subtitles on. There's also Japanese dramas on Netflix where you can turn the subtitles off.
My personal favourites are (German Grammar Drills by Ed Swick) and (Grammar Workbooks by Heiner Schenke and Karen Seago), not to forget (Intermediate German: A Grammar and Workbook by Heiner Schenke and Anna Miel). All are great book for practice and really fun exercises to do.
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Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata and Wheelock's Latin are the go to books for learning.
Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata is completely in Latin and makes you learn by reading.
Wheelock's is learning by studying grammar.
What I recommend is looking up "Learn Latin" on Youtube to study the basics of pronunciation and learning what you can from there. If you enjoy it, buy one of those books to dive deeper into the subject.
The best way to learn to read handwritten Chinese is to learn to write handwritten Chinese.
This book is an old but good introduction in English.
If you are comfortable with Chinese only text, then I'd recommend this book, which is far more comprehensive.
You don't actually have to remember how to write the characters long-term, just go through all the exercises in those books and you'll find you'll then be able to read most handwriting without too much difficulty.
I would very much like for the three Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar (Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced) to be digitized to make searching easier.
I may have got it used, but I just found it new for $18 on Amazon, so like lol I dunno what you are doing. https://www.amazon.com/Jpn-Genki-Answer-Key-Japanese/dp/4789014479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526747316&sr=8-1&keywords=answer+key+genki
You seem to be posting a lot of questions regarding Latin, I'd suggest posting over on r/latin where they have a lot of great Latinists who can help you out. I'd also suggest you check out Latina Ecclesia that was produced by one user from r/Catholicism on how to do Church Latin. I'd also suggest picking up A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin by John Collins and maybe considering some of the resources by The Family of St. Jerome, a lay association of Catholics dedicated to preserving and advancing Ecclesiastical Latin for devotional and church practices. Some of their material has been reviewed by a user here who recommends them. They have a DVD course where you would be able to hear accurate pronunciation of Latin.
As for pronouncing your r's, you're going to want to trill your r's slightly. You're not going to roll your r's deeply as in Spanish, but there is a roll. To practice, try saying the word right and place an "h" in front. This will allow you to begin to practice moving your tongue to perform the rolled r sound.
Two book suggestions:
Go for Hansen and Quinn’s Ancient Greek textbook.
https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-2nd-Revised/dp/0823216632
Wheelock's Latin.
My favorite Latin textbook.
You could also ask over on r/latin, they might have suggestions for a broader audience than my preferences.
I used Greek: an Intensive Course as my last textbook (of 4) in college and found it very useful. It’s not specifically biblical Greek, however. If you’re just trying to get a head start or just want to focus on biblical Greek, another option like Mounce may be good.
https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-2nd-Revised/dp/0823216632/ref=asc_df_0823216632/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312242453238&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9067174210130564718&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011805&hvtargid=aud-799728744414:pla-449076143506&psc=1
I am, but i have my high school finals in march and the pre boards are starting this month, so i'm not getting much time to study what i like.
Apart from that i'm starting to learn what forms of verbs mean and how their ending affects the meaning. Like 'ita' means the meaning is related to past tense, and 'tai' means it's about wanting something.
Though i couldn't find any good websites for learning grammar* and don't really wanna spend money on books, even though i've found some good ones.
First, you need to decide whether you want to learn European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese as they have different resources (there are more for Brazilian). Probably it will be decided by which one your university course teaches.
I've been learning Brazilian Portuguese for about 6 weeks now using a combination of methods:
Duolingo and Memrise for apps
Lingua da Gente podcast
Semantica video series
If you want a book, this seems to be the one to get:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_sfl_title_2&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
Of course there are many more resources and it's worth browsing around to see what you like.
LOL if you want to speak at least conversational Korean with the ability to construct sentences correctly and properly as well as know the right usage of grammar and honorifics, don't use K-Drama/K-Pop!
I recommend this book called "Korean for Beginners: Mastering Conversational Korean". It's a short book with only a few hundred pages but by the time you finish you will have an in-depth understanding and knowledge of how to speak/write/understand/converse in Korean.
You can do self-study with this book (it's what I did), but if you want to improve more, you can go on English-Korean student exchange forums to converse and learn with native Korean and English speakers.
http://www.amazon.com/Korean-Beginners-Mastering-Conversational-Included/dp/0804841004
ITT: non-linguist students of Chinese saying "I can't understand Chinese Cursive Script, and only know the typeset forms of characters; they must be writing it wrong."
Yes, spelling errors occur. You can impress people at parties by correctly spelling 喷嚏 or 罐 as a foreigner. No, it is not the case that "nobody under, oh, 25 spells anything correctly anymore."
If you just want to learn it to read it, there's no better combination than Wheelock's Latin and Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata. Wheelock gives you the grammar, and reading Orberg will improve your reading speed and comprehension by leaps and bounds.
There is a book 501 portuguese verbs. I have the Brazilian version but i believe the author wrote a European one as well. It has the 501 most common verbs that are used/spoken and every conjugation for them.
In the beginning of the book the first couple chapters are grammar rules and sentence structure.
Same author also wrote this book which goes over grammar pretty well with a workbook with exercises. Once again this is Brazilian but I'm sure the Grammar and sentence structure will be the same if not very similar
Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415566444/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_qXTADbCEGQ8D5
Boa sorte
There are books to help. Here's an example:
Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese (Far Eastern Publications Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0887100333/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_eL1ywbVHX8TAC
To be honest, a lot of the really good resources for etymology and so on are going to be written in Japanese. That said, here are a few things to try:
Here's a pretty comprehensive list:
Other resources that I want to use but is too much of a beginner to do so:
I'll add more as I think of more!
Edit: Formatting
If you're gonna go live in Thailand you're probably better off dropping Chinese and focusing on one language. Learning two at the same time from scratch is difficult.
Have you already done the Benjawan Becker books? Get those, you'll learn some basic Thai, and since you already know the alphabet it should be easy. Add Thai friends on Facebook and start chatting with them every day. What are you doing, what did you eat etc every day. Use google translate (but only for individual words, it cant do sentences very well) to help. Eventually you will be reading and writing on your own. If you can read you can probably pronounce basic words closely enough that people will understand, try to getting your girlfriend to use Thai with you. Download an app called Hellotalk and find people to do language exchanges with.
Both Wheelock’s Latin and the Ecce Romani series are excellent introductions to Latin.
Not really. The closest you could get are the materials from Pimsleur or the Foreign Services textbooks, but the problem is that those are 100% intended to be used with experienced teachers and in-class drills rather than in isolation on their own.
The problem with avoiding the Japanese writing system is that pretty much all of the worthwhile materials will use the Japanese syllabary (hiragana/katakana) from a basic level and then everything at the intermediate/advanced level assumes that you know how to read Japanese.
That having been said, the Japanese: The Spoken Language series by Eleanor Harz Jorden was written for people in your shoes but is very, very dated (30 years old, IIRC) and is very business-oriented. There are three books in the series (which cover about three years of learning at the university level).
They are very grammar-focused and tend to be verbose (to say the least) in the explanations.
If you can find those, they're probably your best bet. The romaji sucks, though.
Edit:
Japanese: The Spoken Language 1
Japanese: The Spoken Language 2
Japanese: The Spoken Language 3
Not a "course book" but it's one of the best books for learners of brazilian portugues "Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar". It's not the typical grammar book and the author is incredible. https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1503251046&sr=8-3&keywords=portuguese+grammar
I always liked this
As a reference guide I use this
I'd highly recommend A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish as a reference book.
I think what has helped me the most with learning Spanish is trying to read - and reading aloud. Below are some various suggestions on what you can do to continue.
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Go to this site and try to record yourself saying all the phonemes and try to mimic them.
I'd say you can ignore the "espirantes" phonemes though - maybe I can't hear them, but I don't think most Spanish speakers use them. And it'll make it a whole lot harder to understand you if you try to use them.
Spanish is a very phonetic language, so once you get the phonemes down - you can practice on pretty much any Spanish text even if you don't have the source audio.
If you don't know how a word is pronounced, you can check: forvo.com/wordreference.com/spanishdict.com.
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After you have basic pronunciation, I'd suggest start reading. If you can listen to Spanish radio/watch subtitles, you should be able to read.
I'd highly recommend getting a Kindle paperwhite for this. Since you only use it to read, you don't really have to worry about getting distracted. It's very easy to read from and you don't have to worry about reading in the sun/dark.
If you don't know a word, you can easily look it up just by touching the word for a couple seconds. If there's a phrase of interest, it's really easy to save and look at later.
I'd suggest saving phrases that are something you might use yourself, or are things you don't understand grammatically. Go back to those later and figure out the grammar or practice using the phrases.
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Another useful site is Lang-8.com. I'll admit I haven't learned how to efficiently use this site. But it allows you to write things that are corrected by native speakers.
I'd suggest trying to write in a manner more typical of speech than writing when you use it.
Or you could also play around with sentence structures you got from reading/show/radio to make sure you understand them correctly.
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There are sites/apps you could try to practice speaking with Natives. HelloTalk / wespeke.com /interpals.net / or various chatrooms you can probably find with google.
I couldn't try HelloTalk because I don't have a smartphone and didn't have much luck finding people to talk to in the past.
I'm currently using BaseLang to practice speaking. It's a site for one-on-one tutoring for $129/month. It's a bit on the expensive side if the only reason you want to continue Spanish is so you don't lose what you currently have. (I'm not one to talk though, I'll don't have any reason to learn Spanish.)
I find it much more efficient to try to learn grammar on my own and then use them to practice concepts.
The main reason for using BaseLang in my case is because my free time is during an awkward time (EST morning) and I like being able to schedule practice sessions which would be virtually impossible otherwise (without paying for it).
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There was another post in /r/languagelearning that would be worth the read for you: [Here](
https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/5ian7q/language_learning_a_howto/).
Forget the Mangaland books, Japanese the Manga Way is much better, well-structured, covers a great amount of grammar, and deals with the politeness levels.
You should get a reference book (A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar) with it, and The Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary.
Hey! Good to see someone interested in East Asian languages! The CJKV writing system normally throws a lot of people off.
CJK Writing System
I wrote a short little rant a while back on how the characters are constructed that you might want to read.
There are methods of learning the characters that make use of their structure. Heisig's RtK and RtH books (Amazon link) are the most well known books I think. Fansites such as Reviewing the Kanji and Reviewing the Hanzi also exist which you might want to take a look at.
Not sure if you like RtK? Here's the sampler. See if you like it after learning 276 characters~
Chinese-Specific
The only thing headache inducing about any Chinese dialect is the writing system and tones.
Note that though we call them "dialects", it is a matter of politics as most of them are mutually unintelligible. A Cantonese or Mandarin speaker is unlikely to understand a Hokkien speaker at all, for example.
Written chinese, on the other hand, is in Mandarin and only in Mandarin -- the other dialects do not have writing systems. Well... the notable exception is Written Cantonese, but that's can be seen as a variant of standard written chinese.
Oh! There are have two variants of the standard writing system: Simplified and Traditional. I had learnt the former in school, and I can read the latter after learning about the simplification process, so just pick one and stick with it.
I personally find Mandarin grammar to quite simple. This might be because it's an isolating language.
Japanese-Specific
Japanese folk have an easier time with Chinese characters. While 6000 Hanzi is roughly college-level (I think?) in Chinese, 6000 Kanji in Japanese is probably more-than-you-need-to-know-ever. There is a Kanji Aptitude Test which is pretty much the only reason one would learn that many.
However, Japanese also have two syllabaries you'll need to know (~50 syllables each). These are phonetic, so they shouldn't pose much of a challenge; most who learn Japanese learn both of them in one or two weeks.
Essential:
Beginner resources:
Books to get:
Mixed collection of Online Resources:
Non-native speaker here, but serious student of the language.
> What is a good introductory textbook/guidebook for me to use?
I really like Russian for Beginners by Duff. I believe it may be out of print, but there are plenty of copies around. Apart from that, the New Penguin Russian Course is very good, albeit very dense. For example with the Penguin course, the vocabulary lists with each lesson are about 3x as long as the Duff book. Personally, if I were starting out and wanted to have a conversational basis, I'd looking into the UCLA Russian course. The online exercises and audio are linked to the companion book Beginner's Russian which you will need. If you want to move along faster, do both the UCLA course and the Duff or Penguin books.
> What is a good introductory textbook/guidebook for me to use?
I have trouble reading the small print in dictionaries; so I only use online resources:
> Is there an online resource to talk to/chat with natives or tutors? I live in Alabama, so I interact with almost zero Russian-speakers.
Not near Birmingham or Huntsville? I've worked with face-to-face tutors off and on but some people have recommended iTalki which sounds like a language tutor/learner brokerage site.
> Do you have any advice on stuff I should learn first, or stuff that's difficult and needs careful attention?
> Any information or advice you guys have would be most appreciated!
You might consider Duolingo (free) or Babbel (not free). They have pros and cons. If you like interactive web-based training it might be a useful adjunct starting out.
ALC has published a number of quality resources for Japanese speakers learning Korean. In particular they had a number of parallel texts with Korean audio, some designed for learners, others taken from actual KBS broadcasts. Their website makes it seem like they no longer support Korean or Chinese but it looks like you can still order text books, back issues of 韓国語ジャーナル, and other materials.
From the Korean side, Naver and Daum both offer a free online Japanese-Korean dictionaries.
Although learning vocabulary and grammar through Japanese is a good idea, you're better off learning pronunciation through English. Stay away from katakana. The most thorough resource is Sounds of Korean: A Pronunciation Guide.
Since Korean and Japanese share a ton of Sino loan words, it helps to become familiar with some of the common sound shifts. Just like English speakers get free words when learning Romance languages (Eng: -tion → Fra: -tion, Spa: -cion, Ita: -zione), it's easier to tap into your free Korean words if you learn the rules. Some of the patterns are more consistent than others but every bit helps. A couple off the top of my head:
Go to nciku.com, they have an application that can show you the correct stroke order.
Something that you need to understand, though, is that even if you make your handwriting look exactly like the printed font, that's going to be considered "bad" by most natives. It'll be kind of equivalent to what a 2nd graders handwriting in English looks like. What you (probably) want to work towards is being able to read/write handwritten characters (which is in fact a totally different skill than being able to read printed font).
http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333
This book is generally considered the best for teaching that skill. You'll learn how to make your characters look like an adult wrote them, and you'll learn to read handwritten characters instead of just printed font.
Anyone know if the Japanese From Zero will take you farther, shorter, or if its comparable? Getting close to finishing book 1 and kinda curious.
A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish by John Butt and Carmen Benjamin is amazing. It has everything in it in excruciating detail. Well researched with examples from Spanish press and literature throughout the world. There is some slang in there, but not because they want you to learn slang; it's simply incidental to how grammar constructions are used in the real world. I imagine the new fifth edition has even more documentation and clarity.
edit: clarity
A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish Grammar
It isn't tailored to any exams, nor it is it a textbook, but it has EVERYTHING you could possibly need to know about Spanish grammar.
I also agree with /u/ImovedtoEurope's suggestion of Repase y Escriba. You can get the older versions for about $10 on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Japanese-Diversity-Lifestyles-Conversations/dp/030010958X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162331&sr=8-2&keywords=living+japanese
I think that is an amazing recourse. Natural, REAL conversations with people of all ages and topics. Its really good for getting exposure you can learn from easily to native speaking that isn't "dramatized" or too over the top like most anime and Japanese TV acting in general.
LingQ.com (is also a great recourse. and its free if you don't use the in site word marking tools)
https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-1&keywords=read+real+japanese
https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-2&keywords=read+real+japanese
https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568364156/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-3&keywords=read+real+japanese
the last three are good for written japanese, which is more polished and different than real "spoken" japanese (like any language). But they all 3 come with audio, grammar and vocab explanations and are an amazing recourse IMO.
What's your level at? I recommend the Dictionary of [Beginner | Intermediate | Advanced] Japanese Grammar, which my program uses as a supplement for material taught in class. It was originally written back in 1995, but it is packed with explanations and examples for a wide variety of grammar structures.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/4789014479/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_GoJBCbC80HKHD
It does say "Japanese edition" so I don't know if it's written in Japanese or not, but that's the first result (and really only) on Amazon
Edit: my guess is it shows what you are supposed to have written, so since by the end you should be able to read what is written down. It just all in Japanese.
I heard Rosetta Stone is quite poor and expensive, but of course, naturally, I am not an expert :)
Here's what I bought on Amazon so far, still waiting for it to all ship to me:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4805311444/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M3STG9N/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014479/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I am under the impression that it's a good use of time to first learn the Kana (Hiragana + Katakana.) As such, I am currently learning to recognize them by playing https://learnjapanesepod.com/kana-invaders/. Once I learn to recognize them I will move to "Japanase Hiragana and Katakana for Beginners" and drill them so I am able to write them and recognize them more seamlessly, while still continue playing the game to review. I think by the end of next weekend I should be able to recognize the Kana, and hopefully after another 2-4 weeks of drilling I can write them too (I'm not sure if this is realistic at all).
Once I am comfortable with Kana I am going to move to the Genki books, which seem to be highly recommended. I think I will do the workbooks and make Anki decks to memorize Kanji/vocabularly. I think this is approximately 2-3 years of University classes but hopefully this process takes 1-1.5 years of dedicated work? Again, not sure what timelines are reasonable.
Japanese, the spoken language.
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-The-Spoken-Language-Part/dp/0300038348
This book teaches you beginner-intermediate Japanese only using Romaji. Its basically been shit on by most academics I know of and the community sees it as an inefficient way of learning JP, but hey have it your way.
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Spoken-Language-Part-1/dp/0300038348
I used A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin for a time in college. I think it's more focused around church latin post 1000, if I recall correctly, but it probably comes as close as anything would to what you want. It also has lessons that would enable you to study on your own.
Collin's Ecclesiastical Latin will probably be an excellent start for you, along with its accompanying answer key.
Even though the grammar will be mostly review, the vocabulary is geared toward ecclesiastical readings.
Aside from that, also consider Sidwell's Medieval Latin. The back of the book contains a guide to the most common idiosyncracies of medieval and later church latin.
The bible was translated from Greek!
If you're still interested here's an awesome book:
http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Ecclesiastical-Latin-John-Collins/dp/0813206677
My Greek professor strongly recommends against using Athenaze, and I'm not a fan of the "Reading ____" series myself. (I'm currently using the "Reading Latin" books.) I would recommend Introduction to Greek by Cynthia Shelmerdine.
Edit: Here it is if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Greek-Cynthia-W-Shelmerdine/dp/1585101842
There is also this book: http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-Hardy-Hansen/dp/0823216632. I haven't personally used this one, but a couple professors have recommended it.
Gunch is right, Koine is much easier, but it's also much less satisfying and less useful if you want to read anything besides the New Testament. There is actually a sub-reddit devoted to this, /r/IntroAncientGreek, that you might want to check out, and /r/AncientGreek will be a better place to crowd-source an answer for this. If you want hardcore grammar learning, I would suggest Hansen and Quinn but I also recommend Cecilia Luschnig's book Intro to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach which will have you reading actual Ancient Greek texts MUCH sooner than Hansen and Quinn. It's a rather difficult language that will be difficult to learn without supervision and someone to answer your questions, so maybe get an answer key? Best of luck, and Χαῖρε!
I recently bought this book, The Sounds of Korean: A Pronunciation Guide, and so far it is excellent. It is very detailed and has tons of practice exercises.
You can check out a preview of the book here at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=vTuB12nR3qEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
and you can download the exercises in mp3 format here:
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-3043-9780824826017.aspx
This book helped me a bit: http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333
But I'm still awful at it and end up asking native speakers to read handwritten things to me.
To be fair, my horrible English handwriting is probably just as indecipherable to them.
A New Reference of Modern Spanish Grammar
Suuuuuper good.
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Reading, writing, speaking, or a combination of the above? Why are you studying Japanese? How advanced do you want to be?
I'm currently learning some Japanese through self-study because of overseas work. Here's where I started:
At least for me, I got started by taking some continuing education classes at a local community college. That can be a bit pricey, depending on one's budget - it's about ~$200 per semester for me - but the structure really helps make sure that you start off with a strong footing in the language. The text book series we use during that class is Japanese for Busy People, which is pretty good - I can't give a comparative analysis between it and other text books, since it's the only one I've used, but I imagine that you could get at least a little out of it. Though having a teacher there who speaks the language natively to whom to ask questions is also a big help.
In terms of memorization, I can't recommend flash cards enough. Anki is an excellent free resource for that - it repeats cards depending on how long it takes you to get them correct, so it really helps to reinforce things that you're shaky on while clearing things you find easy off your plate quickly.
jisho.org is the main Japanese-English dictionary that I use. It's not something that you'll find too useful just starting out, but it's an invaluable resource once you've got some basic grammar and vocab under your belt.
I hope that's helpful. :)
You could start with Japanese for Busy People. There are two versions one that has romanized letters and the other with Kana (I have both versions). Also, Genki.
These are the textbooks and workbooks that I've had for classes. They are pretty thorough and they come with CDs so you can hear things properly pronounced..
I wouldn't go for something like Murakami to practice translation because, as atgm points out, the translators wouldn't be translating 1:1.
Why not try one of the "Breaking into Japanese Literature" or "Read Real Japanese" books (any kind of reader really)? They usually come with a direct translation and a more artistic translation. The texts are shorter which should keep your interest up for longer but there's still enough stories for you to have enough to do.
There's plenty of others but a few examples would be:
Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text
Exploring Japanese Literature: Read Mishima, Tanizaki, and Kawabata in the Original
Read Real Japanese Fiction: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers
Read Real Japanese: All You Need to Enjoy Eight Contemporary Writers
Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors
I think all of those had the "look inside" enabled so you can decide which style of translation you prefer.
If translation is something that interests you, I recommend heading over to /r/translationstudies to get a few tips on good books on translation studies.
What about this grammar dictionary?
I feel it's level is above N2, so it should be interesting for him.
Read Real Japanese is also very good. (2 books actually)
Depends on what you're looking for:
These are the big ones that I know of. I'm sure there are more out there, so other folks, please comment! I'm also sure that some of my own biases might have come out in the post. I've personally used all of these in my classroom (high school Latin teacher here) to some extent except for Cambridge.
Best of luck to you in your pursuit of learning!
edit: clarity
You can definitely afford language textbooks, especially pre-used ones.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0061997226/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used
The best latin textbook out there for $7. New for $12.
Search for "German Grammar Drills" by Mcgraw Hill. It's short, concise explanations and tons of exercises with an answer key. I worked with this book over the past few months leading up to my trip to Germanyou and it helped me a lot.
Edit: do the work for you.
German Grammar Drills (NTC Foreign Language) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071789456/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_taa_LAgVzbQD3R66E
I primarily use German Grammar Drills and Hammer's German Grammar and Usage. Also look up Practice Makes Perfect series on German.
I'm in the same boat. I'm using the book right now and it is very good. Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar: A Practical Guide
What's also good about it (unlike most BP books) is that it tells you what you need to know colloquially. It doesn't dispense with literary and formal usages but it will tell you beforehand which is awesome. I don't want to write a book in portuguese, I just want to understand and speak the bloody language colloquially. This book is perfect for that.
https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Russian-Interactive-Online-Workbook/dp/0781812518/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=russian+books+for+beginners&qid=1573183106&sprefix=russian+books+&sr=8-2
Honestly I don't think Duolingo is super great for Russian (except for maybe vocab), because Russian is pretty grammar heavy (the case system, etc) so I would recommend more of a formal study. Could you get/download a textbook and work through it? A lot of them have online websites for the pronunciation/listening aspects. I haven't used this textbook (I used Golosa for my 1st year) but I've used their 2nd and 3rd textbooks and they're pretty solid ( https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Russian-Interactive-Online-Workbook/dp/0781812518/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=beginner+russian&qid=1556240078&s=gateway&sr=8-2 ) They also have a website with answer keys and audio (free w/o code): http://www.russian.ucla.edu/beginnersrussian/
My wife has taken courses with GLN and I took a few courses at the KCC. From hearing about my wife’s courses with GLN, it seems more suited to a casual interest and particularly helpful for tourists or language basics. Courses through the KCC are well-handled but much more intense, at most half of those who start Beginner I sign up for Beginner II. Not to mention how insanely small the class sizes get for the later courses. I personally had to drop halfway through Beginner II, I did not have the time to prepare/study outside of class. Also, there can be strong differences between teachers, and that makes a huge difference in whether you are prepared for later courses.
Some of the students at KCC have a background in Korean, either having family members that already speak Korean or who lived in Korea. There were people in Beginner II that lived in Korea for a year or more, you will never catch up to them. You also have your students that are hardcore Korean drama, cooking, and music (K-pop) fans and they can also leave you in the dust. This all makes it even tougher for someone without these backgrounds to get left behind.
There are some excellent resources available if you want to get a head start, such as https://www.amazon.com/Korean-Beginners-Mastering-Conversational-Included/dp/0804841004/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1484328652&sr=8-5&keywords=learn+korean but stay away from Rosetta Stone, as that is more geared to learning romantic languages (IMO). Overall, I would say Beginner I at the KCC would be casual and fun enough for anyone to take, but you have to consider your commitment in moving forward.
I'm gonna chime in and vote against the Ehwa books as well. When I was studying on my own I found Korean Made Easy and Korean For Beginners to be very informative.
If I recall correctly (because I've since lost the book), Korean for Beginners throws A LOT of (helpful) information at you kind of all at once. The Korean Made Easy book didn't have as detailed explanations, but paired with the other book it made it easier to parse things down and learn step by step.
Duolingo hope to release a Latin course on September the 15th. I hope the beginning of your Latin studies won't prove too sorrowful. >!(Sept. 15th is the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Not funny if you have to explain it I guess...)!<
What are your reasons for wanting to learn Latin? If it's mainly for Christian texts, the best textbook is Collins's Primer.
Not free, but a friend of mine taught herself using this book. Used copies are pretty cheap. I've been meaning to get one myself once I have the time to actually use it.
The textbook everyone seems to use is http://www.amazon.ca/Greek-Intensive-Course-Hardy-Hansen/dp/0823216632 -- my friend the classics professor and my friend the classical philosophy professor both learned ancient Greek from the Hansen and Quinn.
These 118 lectures are free, and if you want to also have a book, the lectures follow the structure of this one.
For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:
Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus
You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.
I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.
I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.
Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs
Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs
Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.
That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.
The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.
Athenaze: Book 1
Athenaze: Book 2
Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube
Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.
Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.
Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:
*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)
Plato: A Transitional Reader
Kaegi’s Greek Grammar
Smyth’s Greek Grammar
Plato Apology
Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners
Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader
Basics of Biblical Greek
A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek
Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES
Chase and Phillips is pretty decent (though definitely reflects the period when it was written):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0674616006/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&amp;condition=all
Hansen and Quinn is also good:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0823216632/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&amp;condition=all
I’ve taught with H&Q and used C&P as a supplement when I started to learn Greek.
> Other examples, blood and rain sound the same in Korean yet they are spelt@ differently.
So, 피 and 비. They are two distinctive sounds. It's just that your ears are not tuned to Korean language yet and can't really distinguish them now.
I think it would be really beneficial if you pick up a book like Sounds of Korean and spend several weeks solely dedicated to learning Korean phonology. It will help out immensely with your ability to recognize and produce the sounds in Korean language.
it is this and it is a must have for Korean learners for sure. Hope you can find something similar!
I don't have my copy of it with me to check the table of contents, but I think Sounds of Korean has a chapter at the end about sentence level intonation that could be what you're looking for.
These books are more geared towards writing, but one of the side benefits of learning to write is it improves your cursive reading skills.
https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333
http://detail.bookuu.com/2528718.html
Download a bunch of handwritten fonts. They are out there. Take a segment you can read in a regular font and see what they look like in the HW fonts.
Try writing in semi cursive w/o lifting off paper and you'll understand why some words are written the way they are.
Here is one approach to learning handwritten Chinese. And here is another resource, a book in Chinese about how to learn handwritten Chinese, and Amazon has something that appears to be similar. According to another Reddit post, " You can find a "preview" using a clever google search (add .pdf to its name). " One more book that may be helpful is the book from Yale UP on cursive Chinese.
Think of it like English, there are a handful of forms that are more or less standard. But everyone comes up with their own way of writing quickly, some closer to those "standards," others a bit farther away. But if an individual's writing gets too far away fromt the standard, then nobody can read it...it's like that. u/Luomulanren seems to be saying printed fonts and hand-written scripts naturally don't look the same, including variances like the "a" that you pointed out, as well as ornamental loops and how the letters are connected together.
I also bought this book when I first started to learn, called Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese, by Fred Fang-yu Wang (non-affiliate Amazon link here). It's super old-school--it looks like a mimeograph and was written in 1958. If I remember correctly, it only includes traditional characters because of the date it was published. Regardless, many simplified/trad. characters look the same when written in cursive anyways. But it has great tips, and just helps you learn to read handwriting better anyways. I still have the book at home and I've been learning for 10 years.
So I’m also learning Japanese too and the best method I have found was the Japanese from Zero! series. George is a great teacher and he makes the lessons entertaining as well. He clarifies the lessons and tries to make it as simple as possible.
I was able to start the lessons without the books for the first 5 videos and then eventually got the book on Amazon . It has really helped me so far. Another thing I also use are apps that help me further memorize the hiragana and katakana. I use Learn Japanese!! app on my IPhone and Kana Drill.
Also George has his own website online where you can further help yourself with games, flash cards, etc. I just really like the feeling of having a teacher motivating you to learn instead of practicing on your own. It lessens the feeling of being easily overwhelmed and he helps you on knowing what to learn next.
Either way good luck !
Edit: link
I am very interested in Situational Functional Japanese Vol 1 Drills.
As a way to pay it forward, I have a copy of Japanese For Busy People (Romanized Edition) to offer up. It is a pretty good intro for beginners. Also, なかむらさん has an amazing voice in the attached CD.
Buy a book like this one and read it after dinner, 1 hour per day. Show your coworkers and your boss that you are making an effort.
There's three great books out there that I can think of off the top of my head.
[Read Real Japanese: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers] (http://www.amazon.co.jp/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292)
and
[Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors] (http://www.amazon.co.jp/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148)
and
[Breaking into Japanese literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text] (http://www.amazon.co.jp/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568364156)
PS: if you are "fresh out of Genki 2" level, I'd say these books may be fairly advanced for you, but to each their own. Some people don't mind. There are english translations after all.
Get an SRS. Get Heisig's RTK1. Get a book that illustrates some grammar points -- like All About Particles.
Make a kanji deck from RTK1. Start a sentence deck from All About Particles (or Genki or something similar). Just throw example sentences in full stop with the raw Japanese on the front and defining words you don't know on the back. Then try to find some native reading materials like manga or something.
(or don't, but that's how I did it and it's been great)
> 病院はどこですか,どこが病院ですか？ one sentence uses the は, the other が
https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/55657/difference-between-x%E3%81%AF%E3%81%A9%E3%81%93-and-%E3%81%A9%E3%81%93%E3%81%8Cx
は is usually used for general information, and が is usually used for more specific information. That's not to say that's the only difference between は and が, there are lots of other subtleties and exceptions when to use one or the other.
I recommend https://www.amazon.com/All-About-Particles-Handbook-Japanese/dp/1568364199 if you want a book to explain it.
I have this one and recommend it https://www.amazon.com/All-About-Particles-Handbook-Japanese/dp/1568364199/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=japanese+particles&qid=1569616553&sr=8-1
there is a book on Japanese sentence patterns, Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication.
It is the closest I can think of for what you want. But as someone else said learning a language takes time, you aren't just going to be able convert English to Japanese and sound natural by using a book or an app. If it was that easy, google translate wouldn't be so entertaining in it's mistranslations.
issue with sentence order? Sentence order isn't important, as long as the verb is at the end it's correct. The rest is mostly subtle inflections and phrasing. That is the benefit of particles. English is very sentence order focused, Japanese is not. However if you want examples galore to help you garner a better understanding then i can recommend this book
Sent you PM would some extra info.
As for the reading, Some historical context...
http://www.amazon.com/Thailand-Mr-David-K-Wyatt/dp/0300084757/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1
Some cultural guides might be handy too, peace corp. goes into depth about that.
The best thing to do is study some Thai, and get fit, do some biking, as you are not allowed to ride motorbikes, you will be doing a good bit of biking.
To study Thai, I would suggest
http://www.amazon.com/Thai-Beginners-Benjawan-Poomsan-Becker/dp/1887521003/ref=cm_srch_res_rpli_2
and the next book.
Listen to the CDs over and over to get the sound of the language.
Lots more audio here, this is "In at the deep end learning" like you'll get at peace
http://thailanguagewiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
Also I would http://ankisrs.net/ (it is free) and install some Thai "decks".
Spend 30 minutes a day until Jan you'll be student number one!
Good decks :
1000 Most Common Thai Words Thai consonants (name, class) and tone rules
I'm wondering, where did you buy it?
It's not a well known Thai language learning book when compared to Thai for Beginners by Becker. If you go to Thailand, you'll see that book, along with its CD, in every English language bookstore there.
There's also an app for iPhone and Android and it's amazing. It's missing some details from the book but it's still an excellent way to learn the language
But to answer your question, I looked on amazon and found the book there but I'm not 100% sure if it comes with the CD. The thing is, it's not amazon that's selling the product. It's mostly third-party sellers who are using amazon to sell the product so you have to contact them
Sadly, I can't find any other sites that are just selling the CD
Sorry but good luck on your Thai language journey
Welcome fellow Canadian!
Learning Thai is definitely worth the effort. The hardest part about it is the pronunciation; there are a lot of 'ng' sounds at the beginning and middle of words and that can be difficult to speak correctly.
There are some books that help with learning Thai: Thai for Beginngers is the first. It is authored by Benjawan Poomsan Becker. You can find it in any Asia Books store here in Bangkok.
I used this book as well as the intermediate version and, though I don't speak fluently, I definitely have a working knowledge of the language and I can read it. The book teaches you both reading and vocabulary, if learning to read it doesn't interest you, then skip it. However, knowing how to read it (which is not that difficult once you understand how the vowels and a few consonants work) improves your pronunciation quite a lot. Thai has no official transliteration like Mandarin does (pinyin) so every book has a different method and it can get confusing.
In addition to university-level classes (where I started learning Japanese), I found that the Japan Times Dictionaries of (Basic / Intermediate / Advanced) Japanese Grammar were invaluable resources to get the core aspects of the language all up in my brain-meats.
Basic
Intermediate
Advanced
I can't comment with any degree of certainty about online learning opportunities, but I do know that Skype chats with native Japanese speakers are popular, as well as any number of browser and smartphone-based kanji flashcards that will help with listening / speaking / writing.
I highly recommend getting a Bachelor's Degree in anything (possibly with some study abroad in Japan), then applying for something like the JET Programme, which will give you more of an immersive opportunity to live and work in Japan. Japanese is one of those annoyingly alien languages to the English-language brain where the best study results will come from full immersion--and even then, it's faaaaar from easy. I've been studying the language for 20 years and fluency always seems out of reach. But you might brain better than I do, so don't let that discourage you!
You can find the answers in the Genki Answer Key, which has all of the answers to the exercises in the textbook as well as the workbooks. The transcripts for the listening comprehension exercises are also in the back.
https://www.amazon.com/Jpn-Genki-Answer-Key-Japanese/dp/4789014479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1512073661&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=genki+answer+key
I took Latin in college, and these are the textbooks we used:
Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar are also often used in Latin classes, I think.
Do you have any dictionaries already picked out or are you just using online ones? And what texts did you read in your high school Latin classes?
As a Latin student, I'm obviously biased, but you should choose Latin. Latin is a really fun language, and it's really not that difficult. Since you've studied Russian, you already have a background in declined languages, and your Spanish will help with the vocab. English will help too, regardless of the fact that it's a Germanic language.
If you pick Latin, look into Wheelock's Latin. I use this book, and I think it does a really good job of explaining everything. It's also loaded with examples and practice work, and has a nice answer key in the back if you get stuck. Since it's a course "based on ancient authors," many of the passages are excerpts or adaptations from authors like Cicero or Caesar. It teaches you about Roman history and culture in addition to the language, which I think is nice.
I've also heard plenty of good things about Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, but I haven't used it very extensively.
There's also the Perseus Latin Word Study Tool, which is really helpful. They also have a Greek version, if you decide to go with Greek.
Wiktionary can be useful as well, as it gives full declensions or conjugations for tons of Latin words.
If you progress to a high enough level, you can read the news and tons of ancient authors in Latin.
Also, if you study Latin, we can be language twins. :P
That's very sweet of you; I'm glad you liked the music! Rossini is one of my favourite composers. If you've never seen all of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, it's so much fun. Donizetti's great too and in a similar style; here's an aria.
Italian will help you somewhat, and honestly, if you have a good English vocabulary, that will help you a lot too; no other languages necessary. Regardless of how you do it, it's going to require a pretty big time commitment. I majored in Latin, have been studying it for six years, and in fact I placed first in a Canada-wide competition for third- and fourth-year undergraduates in translating a previously unseen passage, and I still read Latin a fair bit slower than English. I can certainly testify to the utility of reading ancient texts in the original, though. I had a bit of an epiphany in fourth year when I was reading Plato's Phaedo (not written in Latin, I know, but it still applies). There was one point where I was interested in how different translators interpreted a particular passage, and when I compared four or five different translations, I couldn't help but notice how different each of them was from the others. It made me realize how much interpretive work goes into a translation, and it made me happy that my studies were enabling me to make those sorts of judgements myself.
If you do decide to tackle Latin, I can recommend two series to start you out that you could choose one of, depending on what kind of approach you like. In my university, we used a very grammar-based textbook called Wheelock's Latin. It covers almost all the important grammatical concepts necessary to read genuine Latin, and includes towards the end unedited passages of real Roman writing. The downside of the book is that it encourages a deciphering kind of approach, rather than learning to be comfortable with the language first.
The other, more welcoming approach is the one taken by the Cambridge Latin Course. I will note that I haven't used the textbooks myself, but I know it's extremely popular in high schools. Those books try to get students reading right away and gradually increase the difficulty and introduce grammatical concepts along the way. It's more like a modern language textbook. There are three or four books in the series. I suspect that these books would be better for an amateur learner than Wheelock.
If I were you, I'd see if I could take a look at both those textbook series before buying anything of them. Some copies might be in a nearby university library or a high school that offers Latin.
After textbooks, good first authors to read in actual Latin, depending on your interests, are Catullus's poems, Phaedrus's adaptations of Aesop's fables, Julius Caesar's accounts of his campaigns in the Gallic and Civil Wars, Cicero's letters and speeches, or bits of Ovid's Metamorphoses or Ars Amatoria.
If you get past the textbooks and are reading real texts, you'll need a dictionary. This and [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Cassells-Latin-Dictionary-Latin-English-English-Latin/dp/0025225804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1347668490&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=latin+dictionary) are good choices. Anything by James Morwood, like this, is not. Having some kind of grammatical reference is essential as well. Woodcock's Latin Syntax is my favourite for its excellent explanations and its great readability, in spite of its thoroughness.
Edit: Huh, this got quite long. Sorry about that. Anyway, don't feel pressured or intimidated by the length of this. I just listed a few things in case you decide to give Latin a shot.
Wheelock's Latin (link to the seventh edition on Amazon) is an excellent place to start, and at US$15, it's a pretty good deal, too, as textbooks go! I had six years of Latin in middle and high school, so if you need a hand, feel free to ping me. It's a fun language, and learning it taught me as much about the structure of English and other languages as it did about Latin. Best of luck!
I used this book a while ago and really liked it.
This one also looks like it would be good.
I've been using German Grammar Drills and German Verb Drills
Both are really good resources with plenty of practice. I think the verb drills book has an online component as well.
is it this? http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-The-Spoken-Language-Part/dp/0300038348/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1371872142&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=JSL
this
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Spoken-Language-Part-1/dp/0300038348/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=46116G1V2311FB6QKHQH
&#x200B;
This book series, while short uses Romaji and diacritic marks to give you a feel for the intonation of words. Might be useful, depending. The audio drills help immensely, as well. /u/hattori31's recording suggestion is pretty solid as well - especially if you have comparable audio from native speakers on the same vocabulary.
I am learning portuguese for almost two years now.
Lots of resources have already been mentioned here. You can also find some great lists here in the sub (e.g. here for Br-Pt or here for european Pt)
As you are already a language learner, I guess it's needless to say that making studying a habit for every day is key.
However, as some users here already reported, it sometimes can get overwhelming by all these resources that are available. So in order to get started I would recommend to find 3 or 4 tools to use on a regular basis and stick to them. I myself made the mistake to try out to many services/apps/tools in the beginning and also switched between them way too often.
That being said, in my opinion you need tools for the following tasks in order to learn portuguese:
1: Sound
Depending what you mother tongue is you might have difficulties to distinguish between "ã" and "ão" or to properly reproduce the "ão" or "nha" sound. Minimal pairs can help here. You can make them yourself for Anki or use some premade deck or a website that provides this functionality. I remember that /u/pedrosantos16 made a minimal pair collection on his website www.european-portuguese.info , but don't know whether he included the audio already. The Podcast Tá falado is great for sound and pronunciation, too. If you find some youtube videos that focus on sounds you can use those as well. After very short time you should be comfortable with the sounds of portuguese you you can simply drop the minimal pair exercises here.
2. Vocabulary
For obvious reasons. Focus on nouns and verbs (some verbs are beasts as they have a trillion different use cases). I use Duolingo and Anki. Note that lots of learners suggest to learn with pictures (at least for simple nouns) instead of translations and I highly recommend that, too.
3. Grammar
Duolingo explanes very little grammar, but has some exercises. So in order to get the basics and as a reference book I use Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar. Learn some irregular verb conjugation in present tense, make yourself familiar with the regular verb conjugation patterns. Learn the gerund and iperativo. After that past tense (preterito perfeito and imperfeito). Don't worry about prepositions too much, they will come over time.
4. Listening Comprehension
In my eyes one of the most important parts, if not the most important. I don't know about you, but I like to actually use my portuguese in order to talk to people. Although you theoretically know the words, it is sometimes difficult to understand people, there are quite a lot of different accents, and some tend to merge words so it becomes a real challenge. I can recommend Semantica-portuguese (video based), portuguesepod101 (mostly audio based) and the podcasts of the texas university (e.g. lingua da gente). Semantica and portuguesepod101 are comple courses for beginners to advanced, so they can easily replace university classes. I started with a beginner course in university, but didn't learn much. It got me more curious about the language though, so I made the semantica course afterwards and was very satisfied with my progress.
5. Speaking
You should start speaking portuguese as soon as possible, even if you are not feeling comfortable about it yet. There are great tools available and people are very helpful. Hellotalk, iTalki.com, mylanguageexchange.com....there are tons
6. Slang
I noticed, that after quite a while I still was not able to follow conversations. That was because in spoken language, at least Brazilians use a lot of slang words, so over time you should make yourself familiar with them. Just add them to you preferred flashcard tool whenever you encounter some new slangs / idioms.
7. Reading and writing
Some people suggest reading childrens books such as the little prince or similar. Or reading along withe song lyrics. Since reading and writing is not my top priority I cannot give you solid recommendations. What I do is following a lot of portuguese twitter accounts (news etc), so I read at least a little portuguese every day. From time to time I head over to the website of a newspaper and try to decipher some articles. There are also reading tools available online such as lingua.ly but I haven't tried them yet.
8. Culture class
It always keeps me motivated, when I dive into Brazilian cultura. Food, music, city reports, history. There are great video podcasts and blogs available, some of them are listed in one of the other threads linked to above.
I guess that's it, your first year of learning portuguese should be covered by that. Boa sorte para aprender português!
tl,dr I use Semantica, Duolingo, Anki, Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar book on a regular basis, and throw in some podcasts, videos or newspaper articles from time to time
The most helpful thing for me has been the Pimsleur language tapes. I'm almost finished with all 90 lessons. They're great.
Also good is this site, which has lots of dubbed and subtitled movies.
This book is really good: http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444
I find Duolingo so boring that I struggle to keep at it.
I'll list all the stuff I'll be using!
I'm doing Brazilian Portuguese, so I'll be going through the Semantica course which I keep hearing is very good, although subscription-based.
Books that I got were:
Websites:
1. Hacking Portuguese
Programs/Apps:
If anyone has more suggestions, let me know!
I used this book - it comes link to a free website with speaking exercises.
https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Russian-Interactive-Online-Workbook/dp/0781812518/ref=sr_1_27?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1502127954&amp;sr=1-27&amp;keywords=learn+russian
But most importantly if I have a question and need help from a native speaker I use this app called "HelloTalk". It connects you with a Russian speaker and they'll gladly help you (most of the time you help them with English and they'll help you with Russian). The only problem with the app is the time difference, which can't be helped. Like you, I work a full time job and I get most of my answers back in the late PM or early AM unless it's the weekends.
https://www.fluentin3months.com/hellotalk-review/
Similar! :D I want to learn all the languages in the world. Right now I'm learning Korean because I want to move to South Korea. this would help a lot. oh there's more. I forgot. song and funny.
Books are good too. I think the organization of this one is excellent
Collin's Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin
https://www.amazon.com/Primer-Ecclesiastical-Latin-Collins/dp/0813206677/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1487218100&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=collins+ecclesiastical+latin
Granted, this is church Latin. It may be the flavor for you, or not depending on your interests
Free glossed readers: http://www.faenumpublishing.com/available-texts.html
Ancient Greek Alive: https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greek-Alive-Paula-Saffire/dp/080784800X
Teach Yourself Ancient Greek: https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greek-Teach-Yourself-Publishing/dp/0844237868
Intensive Course: https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-2nd-Revised/dp/0823216632
Athenaze (as metioned by others):http://en.bookfi.net/book/710288
AND FOR INSTANT MOTIVATION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5fA6dTnyrE and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX_MSrE9WtE
I like the following book for handwriting.
&#x200B;
https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=chinese+handwriting&qid=1563310119&s=gateway&sr=8-6
Japanese From Zero is a wonderful way to learn! Here's the link to the first book if you're interested
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Zero-Techniques-Students-Professionals/dp/0976998122/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=japanese+from+zero+1&amp;qid=1565528459&amp;s=gateway&amp;sprefix=Japanese+From&amp;sr=8-1
The author George also goes over the entire first 4 books in video lessons which is a great addition to help reinforce what you've learned after reading a chapter.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOcym2c7xnBwU12Flkm5RcLIEhvURQ8TB
So I recently found out about these books called Japanese From Zero. He has an entire Youtube channel dedicated to the books and questions from people. IMO he's been a great teacher and provided tons of free content in addition to the books. There are currently 4 JFZ books. https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Zero-Techniques-Students-Professionals/dp/0976998122/
I've never used Japanese for Dummies, so I don't know how far it takes you and how well it allows you to transition to more advanced learning materials. As has already been mentioned, the easiest method is to exhaust all the grammar your current book can teach. The most popular alternatives to JfD are Genki and Japanese from Zero. If you asked anyone who studied Japanese for a while, if they used either book or at least heard about them, they'll most likely say yes. On top of that, it's easy to build up on your knowledge after you finished the textbook. After Genki 1, you can use Genki 2 and after you finished that as well you'll be quite good at Japanese.
If you want to practise natural speaking and writing, I'd recommend to take a look at an app called HelloTalk. It basically lets you chat with native speakers of a language of your choice for free. It might feel like it's still a little too early to try that but when I look back at how I learnt Japanese, I wish that I would have used that app much, much sooner. It's never to early to start speaking/ writing!
There are lots of decent books out there. I have a pretty decent college textbook that goes over every aspect of Spanish grammar, but I wouldn't recommend its format is not as good as a proper grammar reference. I do, however, recommend this book:
A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish
This one seems to be all-inclusive and well-written, so I'd go with this one.
Pro tip: If you're starting out, a grammar reference will be of little use at the very beginning, but you'll find it invaluable as time goes on and you're trying to compose the language.
If you want to really learn the language, I'm sad to say that probably the best approach is rote memorization of words. Despite what the purveyors of language products would have you believe, there really is no skipping this step. When I initially learned Spanish, my time was divided into 50% vocabulary, 20% spoken conversation, 20% grammar study, and 10% composition, and that worked really well for me. To enhance your vocabulary, there are a ton of awesome interactive exercises here.
Also, if you want to talk to a fluent speaker, just give me a PM, I'll be more than happy to chat or answer any questions you may have.
If you don't have one already, I would recommend one in English to begin with. I swear by the one below. I had the 4th Edition for many years but it was getting a bit tatty and coffee-stained, so I've just bought the 5th Editiion.
A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish
https://www.amazon.com/New-Reference-Grammar-Modern-Spanish/dp/1444137697/
If you ever hear anyone mentioning "Butt and Benjamin" when discussing Spanish grammar, this is the book they're talking about.
Edit: It's worth pointing out that I would call this a descriptive rather than a prescriptive grammar book. In other words, it tells you how things are rather than how people would like them to be :-)
Translating generally hinders language learning. Reading books and articles written in Spanish is a great way to gain familiarity, increase understanding, and develop fluency. However, it is best to rely on cues when confronted with a new word or phrase.
When children learn to read, they are not taught to reference a dictionary or grammar book for every unknown word. Instead, they are taught to rely on the cues given by the text, along with their life experience and the knowledge they have about how the language works, to make sense of what they read. It's okay if you don't know with certainty what every word's equivalent would be in English. As you read more, you will naturally learn conjugations and your vocabulary will build. In time, a book that once seemed difficult will be an easy read.
If you simply want to learn and practice grammar, I recommend Practising Spanish Grammar and A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. The books are written primarily for Europen Spanish, but do note the American Spanish rules when they differ.
Not "in" Spanish, but my personal favorite is Butt & Benjamin.
RTK doesn't teach you to write them, long term it only teaches you to recall them on sight.
The fact that RTK doesn't teach pronunciation, meaning, or compound words makes it useless in my experience - 16 years of study and 10 years living and working in Japan in Japanese.
The only 'good' thing that RTK teaches is the concept of radicals, and how kanji are structured. The down side is that unlike what Japanese people learn (exactly what those radicals are, what they are called, and how to write them in various forms), RTK just barely skims the surface.
I've personally found this book to be far, far better than RTK - http://www.amazon.co.jp/The-Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Dictionary/dp/1568364075/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1397048656&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=kanji+dictionary
I have the old edition and am seriously considering getting the new one as well for the full kana readings
Agreed there. For day-to-day use, electronic dictionaries (that is, online dictionaries like Jisho.org, apps, Yomichan, etc. - not just one of these) trump paper dictionaries completely. Looking things up in a paper dictionary is incredibly time-consuming, and can also be frustrating because you will often forget something right after you look it up, especially if you're a beginner.
However! I think paper dictionaries can be great if you just go through them randomly, and for fun. I own a few Japanese dictionaries (namely this and this), and do just that, flipping through them, reading example sentences, making new connections, and occasionally having new vocab randomly stick by accident.
If I used my dictionaries to actually look things up every time I needed to, I'd go crazy pretty quickly, I think. But if I treat them like Wikipedia (ie, hopping all over the damn place because something new catches my interest every 30 seconds), then that's where I think their value is -- and I would argue that that experience with a physical book in your hands is hard to replicate in an electronic dictionary.
Though, to anyone who's new to Japanese, I'd still recommend going 100%-electronic and saving yourself some dosh. I'd only recommend the above if you like the "nostalgic" feeling of flipping through a book in your hands.
While I personally do not know any, as I am a beginner (for like, 4 or six years due to my lack of studying :D )
u/overactive-bladder had shown me some.
https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=pd_sim_14_1/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=1568364148&amp;pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&amp;pd_rd_w=0Ju56&amp;pd_rd_wg=onHm2&amp;pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&amp;pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
exploring japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Exploring-Japanese-Literature-Tanizaki-Kawabata/dp/1568365411/ref=pd_sim_14_5/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=1568365411&amp;pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&amp;pd_rd_w=0Ju56&amp;pd_rd_wg=onHm2&amp;pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&amp;pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
Is it the read real japanese series? I remember someone mentioning it to me a while back but i forgot about it until your post.
WRT grammar i don't know what it is but I always end up overcomplicating what should be a basic sentence. Especially when i'm not actively trying to think of the most efficient way to say something. It's something I do in English too but since I'm not a native Japanese speaker it just comes off as super awkward, rather than me being relatively long-winded.
I do need to brush up on certain rules that I understand when heard, but tend to fuck up when i'm trying to use though...(causative form comes to mind)
also ty
All About Particles: A Handbook of Japanese Function Words by Naoko Chino has some crazy Japanese phrases, it is full over very stereotypically Japanese stuff. There's a whole page about different ways of saying 'all the section chief does these days is drink whiskey' (as opposed to 'the section chief drinks nothing but whiskey these days'), and lines about people becoming ill from overwork. When I read it to my Japanese friend, he asked me to stop, because it made him depressed about Japanese culture.
+1, the book is All About Particles: A Handbook of Japanese Function Words. It's not free, but it's cheap.
As @Zarxrax implied, if you attempt to read it front-to-back you will quickly find that studying the different usages of the individual particles is not helpful; there are just way too many cases. You will quickly become bored and not retain anything (note that the situation is analogous in English: if you try to tabulate the different usages of "of", "in", "on", etc. you will quickly find there are a lot).
It's a lot easier to learn a foreign language if you learn a bit of linguistics first.
I highly recommend this book , it is my go-to for particles and it is amazing.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1568364202/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1495461694&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=japanese+sentence+patterns+for+effective+communication&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=51NMVyrYjKL&amp;ref=plSrch
No problem, here ya go. :)
I used this book and really like it. It's one to consider.
http://www.amazon.com/Thai-Beginners-Benjawan-Poomsan-Becker/dp/1887521003
I've found the Dictionaries of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar to be the one of, if not the most useful thing, I've found to help with learning Japanese.
Sam Martin's Reference Grammar of Japanese is also excellent, but good luck finding a copy.
Did you mean A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar and A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar? My Basic dictionary is sitting right next to me, so I figured thats what you meant, but wanted to clarify for the OP.
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Advanced-Japanese-Grammar-English/dp/4789012956
I would recommend purchasing the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series (Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced), and then entering the plethora of example sentences into Anki.
In my opinion it's harmful to directly memorize grammatical explanations, as it's contrary to the way that a native's cognition works when producing sentences. Instead, one should use grammatical explanations to gain intuition for how the moving parts of the example sentences add together to produce the meaning (as illustrated by the translation), and then forget the specific grammatical explanations while reviewing only the sentences (looking at the translation if necessary but otherwise just trying to visualize the meaning).
If you can directly import from Amazon Japan, the prices aren't that bad. They are currently ￥3,780 each for the textbooks, ￥1,728 each for the workbooks, and ￥864 for the answer key (note these prices have tax included so if you are ordering and shipping them outside Japan they may remove the tax--I paid ￥3,500, ￥1,600, and ￥800).
Links:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014401
http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014436
http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Workbook/dp/478901441X
http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Workbook/dp/4789014444
http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014479
ISBN-13: 978-4789014472, ISBN-10: 4789014479
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/4789014479/
OP, this is what talondearg is referring to. It's not perfect, but pretty good, and as you can see it's dirt cheap so you cant really go wrong. I have it myself and recommend it.
All the Latin aficionados I know really recommend Wheelock's Latin.
When I first began learning German I relied heavily on Skype. I really believe that by talking with people who are natives you will really begin to get a feel for the language. I think using applications such as Duolingo, Pimsleur, AccelaStudy, Babble, and BYKI really do help teach you vocabulary (and you should absolutely continue using the ones you mentioned); there is no substitute with good 'ol fashioned communication. I used The Mixxer and SharedTalk to find natives to speak with.
I also used this book and this book. Although I'm sure any old grammar book would work just fine. If you want to practice I'm happy to help; even though, I can not offer the type of assistance that a native could.
Hello, i do own this book, its very good for beginners. Easy understand and everything, even has few exercises in it. However, this book alone wont cut it for German grammar because the author only explains rules very slightly and do not cover the whole grammatical area. I suggest you getting
in addition, if you want to really remember stuff you are studying, please dont hesitate to use Anki. This program really helps you remembering words.
As of right now I have, German Grammar Drills,Intermediate German Grammar, and German Pronouns and Prepositions. I plan on buying the rest sometime this mouth. I'm even going to get them in some other languages too.
I found this and this very helpful.
I'm an international student who came to the US for college and grad school, so I've learned Japanese as a 3rd language through a 2nd language, English. (Btw, my mother language is not Chinese.) As for the level of skills, I passed the JLPT N2 in December 2015. This gave me confidence to seek a job in Japan. I did some interviews entirely in Japanese and got offers from two Japanese companies. I cannot say that I was able to say all that I would like to say, but getting offers proved that my proficiency was at a level where they decided to tolerate it.
I started learning Japanese in college in 2003. However, I have not been studying Japanese all the time in the 14-year span from then and now. I did:
Outside class:
My Japanese improved the most when I took classes, and I found that I got a much better hang of the language when I'm forced to write long prose (essays, interview reports, presentation scripts, etc). Self studying other than reading books did not quite help probably because I'm bad at keeping a steady schedule. Reading books, on the other hand, has exposed me to new vocabularies and idioms.
I'm fortunate that I took classes that required me to speak in almost every session. In my first four years of taking Japanese, I was supposed to practice in a language lab and remember "core conversations" before coming to class. Once in class, the teachers would do the live drills of those conversations with each of us individually. Thanks to this, I have no fear of speaking Japanese and making mistakes because I made so many mistakes before (and will continue to do so for a long long time).
While a number of Japanese native speakers have said that my Japanese is "pera pera," I cannot that I can completely understand the language. The Japanese vocabulary is very large and I only know a sliver of it that I cannot get through reading a manga or a news article without a dictionary. There are many grammar patterns that I'm not familiar with, and I always struggle trying to communicate complicated and/or technical ideas. Of course, I will continue to learn, but I honestly don't know how many years it would take until my Japanese is as good as any other languages that I speak.
Resources used:
At Cornell we used Japanese: The Spoken Language series by Eleanor Jorden and Mari Noda. This was also used by the very well-regarded Falcon intensive course.
For kanji lookups, once you get past the jyouyou, Andrew Nelson's Japanese-English Character Dictionary is essential.
For a dictionary, once you can make sense of it, you should start using a Japanese-Japanese dictionary -- that is, not wa-ei, that is, one aimed at Japanese people not foreigners. It doesn't matter which one. You should make it a practice to start using it before you are comfortable doing so. It will take you three times as long as using a wa-ei, but it will pay off in the long run.
My college has us use Japanese: The Spoken Language.
It's... not that awesome. It doesn't use any kana, in fact learning the writing system is a separate book and lesson plan. My teacher (a Japanese grad student) isn't a big fan of it, she says it's very old. And it is. It refers to Russia as the Soviet Union. And it sucks shit at teaching particles.
I'm actually going to buy げんき for the summer so I don't forget Japanese in between terms.
I'm from the US and presently in São Paulo taking engineering classes taught in Portuguese after studying the language for less than 6 months, so I can share a bit from my experience:
Learn basic grammar/vocab from textbooks, read the news in portuguese (globo.com, folha de S.Paulo, etc) and create a vocab list from words you don't know, watch youtube videos from brazilian talk shows (the noite), meet someone who speaks the language (or read articles outloud to yourself if you can't find someone), find some brazilian music you like.. these are some of the thing I did.
Also, BrazilianPodClass is a great podcast to look into. For a grammar text I recommend the following + the complimentary workbook. I find it to be excellent:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444/ref=pd_sim_b_1/192-2892797-9687731?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=0YS5KBCGWRDAYP8JE154
I never found a good cohesive vocab book, so just created my own lists.
Hope this helps! Boa sorte!
edit: Also, it's a beautiful language and I find it fun to speak, so I think you made a good choice! It's not easy to learn by any means, but it's worth it IMO
Yes, you should definitely learn the different levels of formality if you want to speak like the Brazilians. This one is extremely good:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Practical/dp/0415566444
These 2 books are good:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0781812518/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;colid=1YPLQS5TKC7HZ&amp;coliid=I2ZM2MU49FFEQ0
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415712270/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;colid=1YPLQS5TKC7HZ&amp;coliid=IZTY43RILT957
And then it's utilizing your online resources, finding people to practice with, etc. But grammar is you go-go. Without it, it'll be very hard.
> Beginners Russian
This one?
I have been using the Kudyma/Miller Beginner’s Russian (https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Russian-Interactive-Online-Workbook/dp/0781812518) book in my college Russian courses and honestly , it works great for me. Explains grammar well and provides tons of useful exercises in the book, and in conjunction with the online resource. Plus, it’s not too pricey.
I would strongly recommend this, which is the Russian course developed at UCLA. I've used this as a solo learner and it's been great.
Pros:
-All the listening and video material is available online on their website, easy to access for solo learners.
-All of the answers are also available on the website, not in some teacher's course guide.
-It's modern
-It's thorough
Cons: can't find a PDF anywhere, paper version only.
Here is the mobile version of your link
I've had a good time with this so far, but I already knew a bit from talktomeinkorean.com. possibly worth going through their level 1 before getting it :)
that one does look great! i have this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Korean-Beginners-Mastering-Conversational/dp/0804841004/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1313638124&amp;sr=1-1
its good but it doesnt have any subsequent ones, so ill have to switch to some other series once i finish this one.
> talktomeinkorean.com
I will definitely check out this site. Have you used other books/programs? My dad got me Rosetta Stone Korean for Xmas one year. I have been on and off again doing the lessons. I also read a Korean for Beginners book, which was a really good introduction and summary of things. Lots of different insights, slightly overwhelming, but at the same time, just enough to spark interest.
Directly from this:
ㄱ is pronounced similarly to [k] at the beginning of a word and at the end of a syllable; in other positions, it's closer to [g].
The late great John F. "Jack" Collins, an adjunct at the Brooklyn College Classics Department who taught at the Latin/Greek Institute, wrote A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, which might be a good way to re-introduce yourself to Latin from a different period.
Pay no attention to that Redditor behind the curtain. Learn Latin, and if you're learning it because of its religious association, teach yourself from Collins or Scanlan & Scanlan (two volumes).
For a real "nuts and bolts" approach, I would use Hanson and Quinn's "Greek: An Intensive Course". It's intense indeed, but it shows you everything behind the curtains since it is a grammar based approach. The are a lot of other books. Some like Athenaze try to use a more intuitive (and slower) approach, with a lot more vocab. I'm sure people here will have other suggestions, but I don't have experience with Reading Greek.
> I was wondering if anyone has some solid, unbiased sources for serious Bible study?
They don't exist. Everyone has biases. The very best scholars are those who can divulge their biases and give reasons for them and reasons against the biases of others. That's part of the scholarly conversation.
For background stuff, maybe check out:
David Aune's The New Testament in Its Literary Environment
I liked Shaye Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah when it comes to understanding "Judaism" in the first century AD.
NT Wright's The New Testament and the People of God is very good.
I also really liked Brant Pitre's Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of Exile - a reworking of his Ph.D dissertation at Notre Dame (under David Aune).
Mark Goodacre's work on Q is good. I read it early in my academic career and it has kept me from believing in the Q theory since.
The biggest journal in the field is probably Journal of Biblical Studies. New Testament Studies is another big one (from Cambridge).
Edit: Also, learn Greek. There are grammars specifically for New Testament Greek (Koine) like David Alan Black's Learn to Read New Testament Greek - which is fine for an NT Greek grammar (though he barely covers the optative since it's so little used in the NT). I would just learn Classical Greek using something like Hansen and Quinn. If you can read Classical Greek, nothing in the Bible (either LXX or NT) will give you a problem.
Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:
Link: this
|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|
This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting).
If you want to learn it on your own, I highly recommend the book Sounds of Korean: A Pronunciation Guide
It is 300 pages worth of nothing else but pronunciation rules, tips for improving accent, etc. Around half of that is audio listening exercises.
This book helped me a lot. It explains pronunciation of all the letters and explains the difference based on their position in a syllable and in a word. It comes with a ton of audio material and exercises.
http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1370364920&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=cursive+chinese
for calligraphy I strongly learning 楷書 or 篆書 first, then getting good at 楷書, to master the principles behind calligraphy correctly, only then will your 草書 reach its full potential...
To all those who are struggling to read the cursive script, try this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-Publications/dp/0887100333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1266575220&amp;sr=8-1 It's a little dated but still useful.
> I'm gonna disagree here on a detail: 1,500 hanzi is, in my opinion, waaaay too high here for our purposes.
That's fair. I was trying to think about the point in learning where you've seen pretty much all of the common radicals and phonetic elements, such that learning the majority of new characters is just seeing a new combination of those (and then there are the characters with a radical and a phonetic element consisting of a character you already know, but you get the picture).
> Handwritten chinese is the WORST.
You might find this book on Chinese cursive useful. I bought it before I was able to put it to good use, so I didn't study it... and now I seem to have misplaced it. And yeah, real Chinese cursive is difficult. Even after years of seeing my wife's Chinese cursive, I can only recognize 1 in 3 characters on average.
Edit: Forgot to add the link to the book!
Better get started
I really want to learn Japanese. I watch a decent amount of anime, and it'd be great to be able to watch it without subtitles (as in, have it open in a tab while I do other things). I'm also planning a trip to Japan next spring, and knowing the language would definitely be handy. I already know Korean, and I've heard the grammar is similar, so it should be slightly easier to learn, but the writing/reading is going to kill me.
This book seems to have good reviews and appears to be a structured way to learn some basics.
This is one of the first of a few Japanese songs I've listened to and thoroughly enjoyed.
I tried looking up a joke, and the only one that provided an explanation is...
Q: What is Michael Jackson's favorite color?
A: あお！ (Say "ow!" like Michael Jackson style. Means "blue" in Japanese)
Other than Japanese, I'm hoping to make some time to learn French using the duolingo app. I started when I went to France this past year, but I ended up losing my phone and was too busy with studies and travels to continue on. I'd say I'm close to native in Korean and about intermediate in Spanish. I've been working on my Spanish vocabulary using memrise, because that's what usually destroys me when I try to speak it or listen to someone else speak.
Oh, and this is a fun song we listened to in my high school Spanish class.
I’ve been using a textbook called “Japanese from Zero” and it’s a dream. It’s so, so easy to learn from and it teaches you how to read, write, and speak in a natural way.
Japanese from Zero! 1: Proven Methods to Learn Japanese with Integrated Workbook and Online Support https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0976998122/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_xbk7Cb5AD6WWV
here is the power
Come here /r/LearnJapanese , And there are a quite a few options they have in their sidebar.
Other thing i would recommend is, Japanese from Zero.
Im currently just starting out as well.. Not great at memorizing vocab, But i have hiragana fully memorized.
Edit: your second question... how long... it will be a very long adventure, and depends on where you would like to place yourself. There are a ton of KANJI, which all of multiple meanings depending on context and such. But if ur goal is to be fully fluent... well from what i gather, not to be a downer, it will take many years. (specially if you are not immersed in Japanese). Myself, i want to learn cause i love there Music, Anime, and a few JDrama's. So i would like to be able to understand them, ye know, not just Sub them all the time.
Randomly throwing this out there: Silent Siren and Maneki Kecak have some wonderful music.
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Edit 2: Tip: Try not to pay to much attention to Romanji. You can get stuck in a root if you do it that way. Japanese from zero will start off with partial romanji but halfway through the book it will be full hiragana.
You seem to have a good grasp on things. It looks like some of the linked threads follow a similar path, and I'll probably be following a very similar path myself. Nice books, too. I have quite a few myself. I'm not quite sure which of these are good (since they all had great Amazon reviews). I have the following:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014RTDPBA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078G5P6Q4/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014401/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/478901441X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4805312270/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572229195/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GW5KTDK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976998122/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0658014900/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
(Although Genki I and the Genki workbook, plus the Kata/Hira quick guide looks good)
I tried a bit of Pimsleur spanish for what it's worth, and I found it to have the same issues. Talking with a native speaker is hardier, more unpredictable, and yes scarier but so much more useful. If you get this reference grammar https://www.amazon.com/New-Reference-Grammar-Modern-Spanish/dp/1444137697 and read it in conjunction with, say, Spanish language meetups, or iTalki chats with a Spanish tutor, or Hellotalk conversations with Spanish speakers from a country of your choice, I can almost guarantee you'll learn more efficiently than via Pimsleur. Granted, people have different learning styles.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1444137697/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1527170727&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=a+new+reference+grammar+of+modern+spanish&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=41bTv%2BMiftL&amp;ref=plSrch
This is a dense heavy book, but I'd argue a must have. Advanced level means advanced workouts, so it's not going to hold your hand with exercises to fill out. But it's exhaustive in what it covers. I mainly just use it for reference, but you could try taking it a chapter/subject at a time.
I'd recommend writing/speaking lots of practice sentences for each topic to really internalize them. You could use a site like italki or the like to have a native speaker double check your examples.
http://www.textfugu.com/menu/ This website is pretty great for beginners. Its got good structure and the first "season" is free which will teach you hiragana and the basics of the language. Katakana used to be free too but I guess he changed it. I own a lifetime membership but I've long since finished whats available there. It will take you to about intermediate level if you finish the whole thing which can take a few months. I still jump back in and go over the things hes changed and the lessons hes added whenever I can.
This book series is also great, but its a little more detatched and really throws you right into the language, the first in the series teaches mostly survival Japanese and the next 2 really get into the meat of the language. I'm about 3/4ths through the second one.
The workbook, "Japanese for Busy People" (get the romanji version) is good for when you're, well, busy.
I used it to study Japanese when I thought I was going to be teaching English there through the JET program before deciding to enlist instead. It's pretty good for basic stuff, it'll be helpful if you learn your katakana and hiragana on top of that as well. Just learn a few a day and you'll be golden.
Thanks for the detailed post. I think the textbook-search site'll be especially handy, since I've never heard of it before.
And since you seem to know of a lot of good resources, I have a few questions (if you don't mind).
I'm really not sure what to go for. I'm currently using the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course, and it strongly suggests that Learner's Dictionary as a supplement. But at the same time, the regular Kanji dictionary seems to be the better deal since it has much more Kanji. Is there any point in owning both?
Thanks!
I would be inclined to say yes. It's not a system without flaws, as a number of people have pointed out in this thread, but it can be tweaked and supplemented with Firefox/Chrome userscripts to customize it to your needs. If you have money to spare, you might also consider a subscription to Satori Reader where you can set unknown kanji to display furigana according to your WK progress.
If money is an issue, however, the Kodansha course is a pretty good alternative. I have been using the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary that the course is based on and it has been a really good supplement.
I don't have an online resource for you, but there's this AWESOME dictionary that I like called the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary and they have all you need to know about kanji, from its base meaning to common compounds to stroke order, etc. I love the way it's structured and how much I've learned from just looking up a single kanji.
I have do admit I don't have much experience with Hadamitzky dictionaries besides looking up kanji info in an older one a while a go. But I have to say, if it's jukugo you're interested in, get this one instead, it's hands down the best kanji dic/jukugo list I have ever used. I'd go so far to say, I have never seen such a well made dictionary in any language. Thanks Jack Halpern!
http://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Dictionary-Expanded/dp/1568364075/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1414756817&amp;sr=1-1-fkmr0&amp;keywords=The+Learner%27s+Japanese+Kanji+Dictionary+%28Bilingual+Edition%29
Thank you everyone for your feedback. After reading through everyone's comments, I think I'll be buying Tobira after finishing Genki II and KKLC for Kanji. Out of curiosity though, what book do people normally buy after completing Tobira?
Edit: However, I did want to ask though, is there a workbook and answer key for the Tobira textbook? Is this the Tobira workbook, it doesn't specify? https://www.amazon.com/Tsuku-Bumpo-ryoku-Grammar-Japanese-English/dp/4874245706/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=4874245706&amp;pd_rd_r=VEM2VE5J676CC8QW2S4M&amp;pd_rd_w=gshdr&amp;pd_rd_wg=AqZNA&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=VEM2VE5J676CC8QW2S4M
Also would anyone recommend these books with KKLC?
Maybe it just has a new name: The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary: Revised and Expanded
I would have no problem to get it on amazon.de
Anyone ever read the "Read Real Japanese" books?
http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292 Fiction
http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148 Essays
I was looking at them in the bookstore, and they seem to have interesting authors. But I couldn't tell if it is really any help in learning, or if it is something you need to be pretty advanced to get anything out of.
there are many graded readers out there with exactly what you're describing though.
https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=pd_sim_14_1/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=1568364148&amp;pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&amp;pd_rd_w=0Ju56&amp;pd_rd_wg=onHm2&amp;pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&amp;pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
exploring japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Exploring-Japanese-Literature-Tanizaki-Kawabata/dp/1568365411/ref=pd_sim_14_5/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=1568365411&amp;pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&amp;pd_rd_w=0Ju56&amp;pd_rd_wg=onHm2&amp;pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&amp;pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
also, i am a native middle eastern and i studied arabic there. now that i moved away (thank god) i am anxious of losing my dialect and the written language. i have been looking into getting back into kawa3ed for the harakat part. even natives mess up a LOT. i still remember my arabic teacher saying "i always cringe when i hear a news reporter screw up the kawa3ed lmfao.
This one is pretty good:
https://www.amazon.com/All-About-Particles-Handbook-Japanese/dp/1568364199/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1475182255&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=japanese+particles
But I found the information in this book more helpful:
https://www.amazon.com/Kanzen-Grammar-Japanese-Language-Proficiency/dp/4883196941/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1475182306&amp;sr=8-5&amp;keywords=jlpt+grammar
I am very slowly learning Japanese! I started doing it because I got into watching anime online and it intrigued me. Even though I haven't gotten dreadfully far due to dipping in and out of study over the years, I mostly still do it because I find it fun. For years I've offically studied topics like History and English where there's lots of interpretation and less hard facts. So it does my mind good to learn something more... solid? It feels like avery different kind of learning regardless and I find it refreshing.
Grammar is by far my weakest area, mostly because I've found less... 'fun' ways of learning and studying it. Therefore a book about particles would be a tremendous help!
Songs! This is Arashi, they were my one and only boyband love. The level of my obsession was a little scary and I watched far more japanese variety shows than was possibly healthy. This is another song I like, which was one of the... ending? songs for Fullmetal Alchemist. I like how many cool songs by proper artists anime has. I've found so many groups via anime! and this is one I found thanks to Youtube ads!
Bad joke I stole but amuses me:
なぜハワイで歯医者がない？ Why are there no dentists in Hawaii?
ハワイで、歯はいい！Because in Hawaii, ha wa ii!
This is funny because the ha wa ii at the end means Teeth(ha 歯) are(wa は- topic marker particle) good(ii いい)
Edit: Forgot to add this, in Pokemon X and Y you have the choice to play it in one of seven languages! English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, or Italian!
For forming sentences, you need to start with some basic sentence patterns. This is a good book: https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Sentence-Patterns-Effective-Communication/dp/1568364202.
Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication was my favorite grammatical resource when I was an intermediate student. It's a great way to brush up on and get a feel for all the basic grammatical patterns.
Whoa it's out of print and hard to get a hold of? That's interesting. (edit: I just checked Amazon, it seems to be in stock.) Anyway, I have that book, and it was amazing. It was instrumental in helping me with grammar a few years back when I was actively going to the JLPT. I highly recommend it.
I have another book, 'A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns,' which is similar. It covers a lot of the same topics as Effective Communication, but it's unnecessarily complicated in its presentation, IMO. Still a good alternative if you can't find Effective Communication.
I tried Genki as a complete self-learner but wasn't able to stick with it past a few chapters. I think it being classroom oriented was part of the problem. I kept skipping parts that involved practicing with other students. Overall I lost interest for some reason. I may try going back to it someday.
There were a couple books that were really helpful for me learning grammar. One is "Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication":
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1568364202/
It has 142 sentence patterns that cover a lot of practical grammar that I found useful when visiting Japan. I entered all the sentences into Anki, which ended up being 1160 cards. For each card I added notes about the pattern from the book. I found that using flashcards was the most effective way for me to remember the material.
The other book, which other people have mentioned, is Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. This book is awesome and has great explanations that are hard to find elsewhere. I started with the Anki deck but suspended all the cards initially. When I encountered some grammar I didn't understand I would look it up in the dictionary, unsuspend the cards and apply some edits (there are some mistakes in the cards). I would also add useful notes from the book in additional fields.
Suh-too-waat
Tell-lee
Learning a little Thai will make your trip here more fun and enjoyable. Pick up this book, and practice before you arrive.
I don't know of apps as I studied Thai before the invention of smartphones but I really like the youtube channel ThaiwithMod
I also know many foreigners who have done self study with this book and it helped them a lot with writing and reading.
Otherwise just learn some basic phrases about food and directions and try to use it. Thais love it when you try to speak with them in their language. You may get laughs but it is all in good fun.
โชคดี (Chok-dee) Good Luck!
Your comment—and the general consensus around here—convinced me that I should get that series of grammar books. However, I'm not sure I found the right series. If there's any chance you could confirm it's these (basic, intermediate and advanced, seems to be all for ￥11,130) it would be highly appreciated. :)
Thank you!
> I don't really care if Hayashi did his homework or if the lady reading the newspaper is Tanaka and neither do the people I want to talk to.
At my undergrad school, I taught the language lab (1 hour per week required intensive practice session where we drilled the students) for three years. I was surprised at how surprised the actual instructors were that the students often wrote very similar criticisms on their course evaluation forms. No one gives a fuck what Hayashi is or is not doing. But, everyone was up on the latest chapter of whatever Shōnen Jump manga was popular at the time.
I'm a huge fan of manga. Even as a first year student I enjoyed plodding along in my favorite story with my trusty denshi jisho, and copies of my Yellow and Blue. (The Red one hadn't come out yet.)
Pick a story and go for it. Even if you have to keep a translated copy nearby to help understand.
http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014479/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1458365939&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=genki+answer+key
http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1426893349&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=genki+answer+key
This one covers both textbooks and both workbooks. It's not a reference manual though, it just contains answers.
They can be found in the answer key. It's a separate book but it comes in handy if you self-study.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/4789014479/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1484697039&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&amp;keywords=genki+answer+key+second+edition&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=41dA6oHl-KL&amp;ref=plSrch
I don't really know why but the books are listed twice on Amazon... on the more expensive base listing (the 90€ one) the alternative shops are actually a bit cheaper (see here) so at least you could get the textbook for around ~50€ and I think the workbook is around 23€ here (the picture shows the second edition so it should be the right one), maybe if you get them from the same shop you could get lucky with cheaper shipping as well, but I don't know about that (same goes for the answer key )
Apart from looking for cheaper shopping on Amazon de you might also want to check Amazon jp (the shipping costs are pretty high but the base price is much cheaper). I'm a bit too lazy to look it up right now, but you can change the site to English so it shouldn't be too hard. Just don't forget to calculate the shipping in as well!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/4789014401/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1452975070&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=SY200_QL40&amp;keywords=genki&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=51FXpMajKOL&amp;ref=plSrch
I also recommend the work book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/478901441X/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=1Z7QM6FRR2AVB1XWNP2F (more practice is always better)
And the answers to all the questions: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/4789014479/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1452975133&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=SY200_QL40&amp;keywords=Genki+answer&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=41dA6oHl-KL&amp;ref=plSrch (just to make life easier if you get stuck)
Make sure to download the audio files from the cd and always listen to the accompanying audio while going through it, even a little listening will help you out.
It's never failed me:
https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Dictionary-Expanded/dp/1568364075
Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsan Becker
Does a great job explaining tones and pronunciation.
Hello!
I'm interested in taking genki too, i would like to know if you bought only the book
or if you also bought the exercises ( question and answer)
thank you!