How to learn Japanese fast

Another new adventure. I currently am fluent in Dutch, English, French, (Swiss) German and pretty good in Spanish as well. Why stop here? I decided to take on a real challenge and learn Japanese.

My post about learning languages with Michel Thomas talks about how we can easily learn the structure or grammar of a language. I loved this method so much that I dived right into his Japanese program and finished the foundation course in two weeks.

Japanese is different though from Spanish (no kidding...). It turns out that this language developed completely seperate from other languages and therefore has little to no common ground with English words (except the newer words like 'computer'). So while you can 'guess' many words in Spanish from how they sound (for instance, all English words in -tion, are the same but end in -ción), most Japanese words are pretty encrypted. When I started realising this, I stumbled upon a method based on Harry Lorayne, one of the world's top memory training specialists. His memory technique is so simple, so powerful, that Time magazine calls it "a never fail system for remembering everything.".

Using this method, I was able to memorise up to 100 words per hour (but I usually stop a bit sooner :-)). The method simply involves associating an image or idea with the word being memorized. Let's take a simple example: image you want to remember the Japanese word for hill. The word is "saka". When you say it, it sounds similar to the word "soccer". So in this case, we'll make an association with soccer. Close your eyes for 10 seconds and imagine a boy playing soccer on a hill. While you are imaging, repeat the word saka to yourself. That's all there is to it. You probably always remember the Japanese word for hill.

Based on the same technique, I found a usefull chart for remembering Hiranaga: http://japanese.gatech.edu/WebCTVista/JAPN1001/contents/Lesson02/hiragan...

and Katakana: http://japanese.gatech.edu/WebCTVista/JAPN1001/contents/Lesson02/katakan...

Get the step-by-step tools you need right here (vocabulary builder).

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