Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
Well, my Japanese teachers and the audiobooks I use to learn the language, including one of the best systems's around, Pimsleur's Japanese language program. Learning the proper polite notation is actually quite useful. I know you live(d) there Commodore, but when I was there I got by quite well using the polite notation considering I wasn't a native. Perhaps when I go back there again I will start to pick up on the informal methods.
As for the verbage, that's one of the hardest parts - memorization of all the verb conjugations, as I'm sure you can attest to!
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Hey, it's all useful. But if you ever want to grasp it, nobody uses the polite form, so it makes it hard to figure out what everyone's going on about which doesn't help in aiding comprehension when spoken to. I've been here for a while (two trips, closing in on eight years, and studied for a couple of years back in Calgary), and speak, read and write the language now so I'm pretty set on how the language should be studied, I guess (as an example, I recommend those who can't read the language when they arrive here to study katakana first as it will give them an "instant" vocabulary). Once you get the conjugation patterns down things pick up really quickly so I have no idea why they insist on teaching them "backward" relative to how the language is taught otherwise. Keep it up!