Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : Learning to type/speak a language online

[Tee]

Im just curious if any of you have any experience learning languages online -- expeially to type a language, I've tried audio tapes and for speech they're great but typing is another story. I've tried things like mylanguageexchange and it never worked out. Google isnt much help either.

If anyone has any suggestions for learning korean / japanese typing online OR offline it would be very helpful, Thanks!

[Aion]

Well, as dumb as this may sound - I started to learn Japanese many years ago through watching old Japanese Anime on VHS, of course this progressed to DVD e.t.c as time went on.

As my interest in learning the language grew, I decided to learn Katakana/Hiragana through the many tutorials online, starting with the basics.

I bought a large dictionary, and use it to refer to for things I don't recall.

Learning Romanji was fairly easy, although a lot of the time - the spelling is nothing like the phonetic pronounciation.

In short, Google "HIRAGANA KATAKANA TUTORIAL".

Advice, don't jump in with Kanji!

[effusionx1]

It is a little strange really; i'v'e never really wanted to learn a new language and I can't say it is something that does come naturally. (At least not when taught conventionally.
I find it alot easier to learn any language by being in that country and conversing with people who actually speak the language. In these cases, I find I often pick up the fundamentals within a few weeks.

However, being able to learn the spelling and grammar of that language and it should be physically represented on a page is a different story and requires an almost paralell learning phase.

I'd suggest that you start off learning how to speak the language and then you can progress to writing the language. Although I only have a qualification In German, and experience in French - I can imagine it would be hard to learn to "type" (write) the Japanese language or any other such variations because of the way in which the letters and words are so dissimilar from most languages.

Good luck! - You'll porbably find the language learning process is perputual; in that you start and learn exponentially more as you go along.

Jord

[WirralNet Matt]

A good place to start for learning languages is the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/index.shtml

There is one or two courses on Japanese available, although of course most of the language courses are for Western languages.