You may be interested in reading some of the comments that we have received about these lessons. Please feel free to add your own remarks by using the box at the bottom of the page.
Please note that there are additional comments at the bottom of the How to Read Japanese page.
Hi Roger, I want to thank you for these lessons. I really do not know how could I have been able to continue my Japanese studies after Pimsleur without your lessons.
You should have “Donate” button on your site 😀
Ari-Pekka, Finland
Hello Ari-Pekka,
Thank you for your message. It’s great to hear from you.
Thank you Roger for making such an amazing project available and free to the public. I have been studying Japanese for half a year now on my own and since I am a high school kid with lots of extra time I have studied a lot. Although, I have not had many opportunities to speak with actual Japanese speakers and get a better concept of their grammar. In fact I have spent most of my time learning Kanji, so much time that I can read 2/3 of the jouyou kanji but I have an extremely limited vocabulary. I still struggle to have Japanese audio spark a reaction in my brain in order to come up with meanings to words . I am a visual learner so it is hard for me. This is just what I need. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your message, Ryley. It’s great that you know so many kanji.
Although I think that it may be easier to learn kanji a little later on, after you have already acquired some basic Japanese grammar and vocabulary, it can’t hurt to study kanji first, or to study all of the components of the language at the same time. As you get deeper into Japanese study, you will find the kanji that you know showing up everywhere, and that will greatly reinforce the interest and pleasure that you feel as you learn the language.
With that sort of foundation in kanji, I think that you should be able to make excellent progress in Japanese.
If you are deaf and struggling would the text version of this help in any way? I am only looking to read and write Japanese fluently as I unable to speak properly. I have grown up in a English house hold but all my friends speak Japanese due to my school, I am unable to currently lip read them but I am able to lip read English.
I hope that you and your wife are well and safe
Catherine
Hi Catherine,
Thank you for your message.
That is a very interesting question. I would say that the transcript could help you with lip reading, since the romaji (the Westernized text) does approximate what Japanese people say when they talk pretty well. If you then tried to write things to your friends using romaji, they should be able to read the romaji, with some difficulty, as they are not used to it. However, your friends could hardly expect you to master written Japanese as they use it, with its 3 alphabets. I suppose that, if you learned to write just one alphabet, such as hiragana, it would be easier for your Japanese friends to read what you write to them.
If you use a computer to write, then you can type things in romaji and have the computer convert everything you write to hiragana. On my Windows computer, you need to install a Japanese language pack in order to do this. After installing the language pack, the Language Bar will show up at the bottom of the screen, and you can click on it in order to change your input language from English to Japanese, and back again.
I hope that this makes sense.
Hi Roger,
Thank you very much for offering these lessons free of charge. I’ve been studying Japanese on and off for about seven years (and have logged around 5,500 hours) , and while I know a few thousand words, still have the frustrating experience of not being able to construct grammatically correct sentences. I trip over even basic phrases it seems. It doesn’t help that I only contact Japanese people a few hours a week and live in Austin, Texas.
As you said in your video, Japanese grammar is just so different that our English-wired brains just won’t absorb it easily; it has to be intentionally put to memory. I discovered jalup.com and Anki for kanji and vocab about a year ago and have noticed real gains in my reading and writing, but sorely lacked in my speaking ability. Then today I discovered your site. I really agree with your three keys to learning Japanese, but I’m not exactly sure how to make mnemonics beyond those I know for Kanji. I want to try though, if you feel they help.
I’ve tried your first two lessons so far and probably answered 95% correctly of lesson one and around 85% of lesson two. I’m really looking forward to diving into Japanese Audio lessons and I want to thank you for your work and pray that it will benefit many in their struggles to learn this hard, yet rewarding language.
Thank you for your message, Merrill.
You’re welcome for the lessons. It seems like a lot of people are having a hard time with Japanese grammar, but at least we aren’t giving up! It does get easier with practice.
Speaking of mnemonics, I included them sparingly in the first 27 lessons, but if you look at Lessons 28-33 you can see that recently I’ve been inventing mnemonics for almost every unfamiliar Japanese word. It sometimes takes awhile to think of a half-decent mnemonic, but I think the extra effort really pays off. I use a Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate dictionary for most of my mnemonics. This dictionary includes lists of biographical and geographical names at the back, and I search in those lists when I can’t find mnemonics in the dictionary itself.
Thanks for the hard work you’ve put into the mnemonics!They have definitely helped me learn several new words that I would have previously just let go. Currently at lesson 22 and looking forward to 27 and beyond.
Hi Merrill,
It’s nice to hear from you again. I’m really impressed that you’ve made so much progress in such a short time, but I believe you said that you’ve been working on Japanese study for over 7 years, so no doubt a lot of the material is like a review for you. Keep up the good work!
Regarding the mnemonics, I’m happy to hear that some of them are working for you.
Hi, I just came across this website by chance and I found your work amazing.
I’m currently still on the Pimsleur (almost 15 lessons left to finish it) , but as soon as it’s over I’ll start studying the material that’s downloadable from this site.
Thanks a lot for the opportunity you give us. I’m studying japanese as a hobby in my free time, but the more I go on the more I want to find new good material, so this came as a gift really.
Thank you for your message, Alessandro. It’s good to hear from you.