Things You'll Need:
- English-Japanese dictionary
- Japanese audiotape
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Step 1
Study Japanese in holistic form, rather than trying to translate English phrases into Japanese phrases. You can consult a Japanese dictionary to help expand your vocabulary, but few phrases in English have a direct Japanese translation.
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Step 2
Memorize phrases essential to polite conversation first. To engage in minimal conversation, you must learn greetings, farewells, expressions of thanks and basic affirmative and negative replies such as "yes," "no" and "I don't understand."
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Step 3
Listen to a native Japanese speaker live, on audiotape or on the Internet to hear subtleties in pronunciation. Memorizing phrases isn't enough to ensure that a Japanese speaker can understand you.
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Step 4
Understand that the Japanese language has different levels of politeness you can use, according to your audience. Learn the most polite phraseology first, as it's better to be overly polite than to be perceived as rude.
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Step 5
Learn verbs first. The Japanese language places a strong emphasis on verbs and you can frequently express yourself by using a verb and little else. Remember that the verbs in Japanese sentences always come at the end of the sentence.
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Step 6
Make a common noun into a verb by saying "suru" or "kuru" after it. Suru means "to do something" and kuru means "to come."
Comments
lizah09 said
on 5/23/2009 Get Free 6-Day Japanese Course (audio tracks, lessons and activities) from http://offto.net/LearnJapanese_4a18/