The fun way to learn a language

[BooJaka]

A while ago I took a GCSE in Japanese. I enjoyed it but, since it was at college, I didn't typically put a whole lot of effort into it.

Recently though I've felt a huge urge to go back and relearn it. I bought a CD and book set a while back and, though it teaches quite well, it's not especially fun. Does anyone know a fun, interactive way of learning a language?

My first thoughts were some kind of DS game. You could write on it, read from it, listen to it AND speak to it. It would be perfect! Unfortunately though, as far as I know anyway, Nintendo haven't released such a miracle product. There are some homebrew things but they don't look particularly great quality and I'm not entirely sure I understand nor have the means to run homebrew stuff.

So if anyone know anything like that that actually exists, particularly for Japanese, post now or forever hold your peace!

[DanJW]

http://kotaku.com/353149/english-of-the-dead-so-cool

[miffy495]

From what I've seen of that one, isn't it for Japanese people to learn English? Wrong way, I think. Also it seems like it would be more of a practice thing than a learning thing. You'd already need to know a bunch before you started. I was really excited the first time I stumbled across that too, actually, but the more I looked at it the more it seemed to be entirely the wrong direction from what I was hoping for. Fingers crossed they'll reverse engineer it for English audiences, but my hopes aren't exactly high.

[Nachimir]

I've not tried it, but will do later this year: Rosetta Stone

It's not a game or "fun" as such, but I've heard high praise for it because of the technique it uses to teach. Rather than translating languages into each other, it presents images with the equivalent words in the language you're trying to learn.

You learn the language like a child would, which seems to be what human brains are optimised for. Pictures make things easier to retain, since long term memory works much more efficiently with image based rather than verbal data (A lot of the techniques used for memory feats, like memory palaces, are based on translating information into images for easy recall - knowing this is why I want to try Rosetta).

A friend who tried it with Mandarin said it was very good, but redundant for him since his employer were paying him to take four hours of Chinese classes a day

[Ginger]

Fun way to learn Japanese; well there is the obvious, beyond that classes could be fun (depending on the teacher and other students), or watching subtitled anime (depending on how good your basics are, u may pick up a fair bit)

[miffy495]

I've not tried it, but will do later this year: Rosetta Stone

It's not a game or "fun" as such, but I've heard high praise for it because of the technique it uses to teach. Rather than translating languages into each other, it presents images with the equivalent words in the language you're trying to learn.

You learn the language like a child would, which seems to be what human brains are optimised for. Pictures make things easier to retain, since long term memory works much more efficiently with image based rather than verbal data (A lot of the techniques used for memory feats, like memory palaces, are based on translating information into images for easy recall - knowing this is why I want to try Rosetta).

A friend who tried it with Mandarin said it was very good, but redundant for him since his employer were paying him to take four hours of Chinese classes a day

Damn, that's a bit expensive but sounds really cool. I may have to look into that.

[Marek]

I highly recommend Learn Japanese with Beb & Alex:

http://japanese.libsyn.com/

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yeah, the Rosetta Stone sounds fantastic. Shame it's so expensive I've tried the demo and it seemed to work for me!