I’m one of the two (probably) creatonauts of the Japanese course, and I’m a native speaker so I never really learned the language as a whole so I want to hear how some people are learning Japanese.
I personally want to prioritize teaching things like pitch accent because no program really teaches one of the most important parts of pronunciation, and not using the latin alphabet, but I’m open to suggestions!
Chrisbpy 30/10/2024 1:51 am
So I think most people learn pitch accent somewhat instinctively through immersion and shadowing. When you went to school did they explicitly teach pitch accent or was it simply acquired? However I think it should be documented somewhere and perhaps displayed when you click on a word that you aren’t sure about.
As for the other parts of the process I agree to no romaji used anywhere outside of teaching hiragana and katakana.
As for the rest of the teaching process I’m fairly open, I just don’t think “speaking” should be done too early. We need to absorb and have a good sound memory through a fair bit of content before we know exactly what things should sound like. If you speak too early to tend to develop bad speech sound that can be hard to break.
TSGSaysHi 08/11/2024 10:40 pm
In addition to pitch, I personally while learning Japanese am also really curious as to how letters are spoken differently to English. I’ve looked it up, but gotten mixed results so I’ve just done my best to mimic it but like for example I’ve seen that the N is pronounced differently in some way. I’m unsure how one would include that but I think it’s at least interesting to think about, and it could definitely improve one’s accent speaking a different language for any language, not just Japanese.
connie whatever 02/12/2024 6:26 pm
@TSGSaysHi ohh, that’s a good point!! see, maybe for hardcore linguistics nerds there should eventually be some reference to the international phonetics alphabet (IPA), and some mouth charts/diagrams/models (not sure what they’re called, but the little moving model of a mouth that shows you how to shape your tongue and lips to make a sound) would be super helpful to make sure you’re on the right track. it’d be a really ambitious addition, but one that I think would really help people if they’re just straight stuck on how to make a sound. I know I’ve heard as a monolingual English speaker, if you’re not familiar with Spanish pronunciation first, the soft tapped r sound that’s really common for ra/ri/ru/re/ro can be a straight up mystery and usually gets explained as sounding like an “L” sound, but the American L sounds really different.
Including pitch accent in the course would be cool. I hope that it will be optional rather than mandatory. Otherwise there might be a risk of learners turning away from the course in search for an easier experience. But I’m not sure. Personally I’ve been wanting to learn more about Japanese pitch accent for a long time.
With Japanese, it seems that using mnemonics to remember kanji is popular. It can also be helpful when learning the kana. If you want people to get used to kana quickly instead of using romaji, then mnemonics will probably help a lot, at least for some people.
Textbooks and such tend to teach masu-form conjugations before short form ones, because it’s easier to get started that way and it’s “polite”. As someone who learned the basics casually through the internet, I feel like this resulted in me over-relying on using the masu stem and I’ve seen the same thing happen with others. It took a long time before I properly learned all the short form conjugations because I didn’t bother. So I’ve been wondering if it wouldn’t be better to teach the short form conjugation first, though it takes more effort to memorize which could demotivate some.
It’s often said that it’s best to study kanji using words, rather than studying kanji in isolation. The same principle can be applied to learning certain words that might not have direct English equivalents, they are better understood when placed in a sentence rather than in isolation (context + association).
Thanks for creatonauting!
ooh pitch accent is an important one!! I’d love to better learn it for sure, even if it seems like memorization might be a little hard. 😵💫 I’ve seen people use pitch accent maps to show the rise’s and falls through a word/sentence, which I find rather helpful. but, I also know that some forms of chinese romanization also make use of accents on latin vowels to mark rising, falling, or flat pitch (ex: á, à, ā), so that might also be an option to look into utilizing, even if it’s not very traditional for japanese learning. you could likely even make use of both with some time! if you wanted anyway.
as for me, I’m learning through a tutor and textbooks irl, and I’m using youtube videos, flashcards, and kanji learning apps on top of that to get a more well rounded scope. I also watch a good bit of anime, since it’s listening practice that I can follow along with easier than content by and for native speakers, but isn’t so slow and meticulous that it’s unrealistic like with textbook listening practice.