Living in Japan | Language Help
Motivation for learning Japanese and other foreign languages
Recently, a company in Japan gave us a translation job for their corporate web site. The company planned to run web sites in 5 languages; Japanese, English, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Korean and German. Currently, their are increasing amounts of Japanese companies interested in operating web sites in foreign languages, in Japan.We were commissioned to create translations for the English, Korean and German sites, and the Chinese sites were to be translated by a Chinese employee working for the company.
The Chinese employee has a good command of the Japanese language, and speaks Japanese very well. This person can even read Japanese with out any troubles. In fact, she pointed out typo's in the Japanese site, that no Japanese employee of our client noticed. Amazing!
One day I had a meeting with this woman and had a little chat and asked her how she learnt Japanese. I thought she might have went to a Japanese language school for a considerable while, before starting to work. However, she didn't. When she came to Japan she couldn't speak Japanese at all, and also married a Japanese man.
When she started to live in Japan, she didn't understand basic words and was having a tough time communicating in daily life. While she went shopping for food, she just opened her wallet at the cashier and let the cashier take money from her, for the amount she owed for her purchase!
However, she soon started working at a small factory and started to communicate with coworkers in Japanese. And then, she became able to speak Japanese before she knew it. Yes, she learned the hard way by learning from conversations only.
After she learnt Japanese, she started to receive opportunities at her place of work, and she finally earned an ideal job. She is now one of the most reliable and respected employees at her company.
The lesson of this story, it is really hard to learn foreign languages, and there is many times you feel like quiting....Tell me about it, I have been personally trying to learn German for years, with no progress.
I hope her story would encourage people who are struggling in learning foreign languages and are losing motivation.
Keep on learning, set some goals to get something better in your life. Whether it is to purely learn a foreign language; get a promotion in your job, prepare yourself for travel, or simply understand the secrets of an exotic recipe by understanding and pronouncing the ingredients!
OK, here is some good info regarding Japanese lessons.
This online school site offers free Japanese learning materials.
Beginner or pre-intermediate Japanese Lessons by Email
You will need to register, but it is free.
If you register, you will receive 9 helpful e-mails, as outlined below:
Vol.: 1 Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji
Vol.: 2 Greetings; First meeting & Parting
Vol.: 3 Appreciation & Apology
Vol.: 4 Greeting Custom and the Manner about Eating
Vol.: 5 Greetings; Leaving Home & Arriving at Home
Vol.: 6 Introduction
Vol.: 7 Interesting things about Japanese
Vol.: 8 Useful Information about Japanese Study
Vol.: 9 Advice on Japanese Study
I hope what I wrote will be helpful when you are learning Japanese!
Background on Japan Online School
An online Japanese language school site, managed by a young Japanese guy. All the teachers at this school are native Japanese speakers. They not only offer online Japanese lesson at very reasonable price, there are newsletters filled with very useful information on learning Japanese. Students can sign up and the newsletters are sent to you via email
For more detail see Japan Online
