help

[irisisdagurl92]

i barely know japanese. please help!!

[auran]

i guess i can help pm me if u need my help

[zeno]

Well, I don't know that I can teach anyone, as I just signed up on this forum looking for someone to correspond with to help me learn. But I have two years of (American) college level Japanese, so I can read and write kana, maybe a bit more than a hundred kanji (I know, I know, not that impressive), and speak at the barest conversational level - like getting street directions or ordering at a restaurant. If you take classes at university for Japanese, these are the things you'll probably learn.

So if you, or anyone reading, wants a partner for conversation (email, voicechat, whatever) it would help me out as well. I have some experience with the culture, as I lived in Japan for a year; I wasn't really required to speak the language much though, and it wasn't until I came back that I really learned more than basic greetings.

An open invitation to anyone, let me know if you're interested.

A few resources to help:

Kana Flash Cards - little online flash card program for learning kana

JLPT Kanji Project - Japanese study tool - very nice kanji dictionary, for studying for the JLPT (US)

Kanji Stroke Order - stroke order for basic kanji, which is important (kanji selected from Nakama textbook)

HIRAGANA RANDOMIZER - FLASHCARD - another hiragana flashcard program - simplistic

Japan Information and Culture Center of Washington D.C. - Embassy of Japan - not strictly language related, but some cultural info

Bridging Scholarships - another non language resource, provides scholarships to people that want to study there

Japanese Language Proficiency Test in the US The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles - about the JLPT (US)

Sorry if some of this info is US specific, but most of it should still be informative, unless I'm being redundant. I have some more links somewhere, if you found any of this useful, let me know and I'll try and dig them up.

がんばって

- zeno