How long does it take to learn Japanese and Korean to the fluent or conversation level?
457455
there is no similarity between korean and japanese, other than the fact that the grammar is very similar.  vocabulary-wise, many words in both languages are based off of chinese characters.  however, japanese uses chinese characters (kanji) and pronounce them by pure japanese words, and koreans simply have pure korean and sino-korean vocabulary mixed together... in essence, almost two words for everything.\ni've studied both korean and japanese, and personally, i found korean to be much more enjoyable.  then again, i'm sure this is only personal preference.\ni studied korean intensively in korea, and it takes a while to attain even a basic level of fluency, due to the fact that the grammar is almost completely backwards from english.  however, in korea, most korean people are very helpful and willing to work with you.  when i went to japan, i noticed that most japanese people either ignore you completely if you talk to them, or rattle off as fast as they can even though they know you won't understand it.\nif you're choosing whether to study in either country, i'd certainly recommend korean.
976758
I was studying Korean for the Army at DLI. Korean is a very logical language. If you look at it like a puzzle more than speaking it makes it easier. Start off with the alphabet and the character structure. There are very concrete rules about where the individual symbols can go. Then move onto the pronunciation of each symbol and the characters once the symbols are combined. That should give you a good start. Stay away from books that will give you phonetic "Americanizations" of Korean words because it will only confuse you. Then you can move onto sentence structure and the hardest part (for me anyway) verb conjugation. Three main focuses: reading, speaking, and listening. One last tip... Have fun with it! Learn dirty words and make up nonsense sentences. If it is too much like work it will get frustrating.
729974
Guide or teacher it is best to have the help of a person who has gone before.  To start you should learn hiragana as you can write everything in it.  But, you should not neglect katakana.  And, you should start in using kanji as soon as you've hiragana down.  Japanese is a mix of all three.  While you are learning hiragana you can learn to pronounce Japanese.  That part is very simple. To learn by yourself you will need some books on grammar.  I think grasping the grammar and learning to read and write kanji are what makes Japanese seem difficult.  Kanji just takes time. You can learn about 100 a year.  You just write them CORRECTLY over and over.  and it gets easier and begins to make sense.  When you write them also you learn the pronunciations (the Chinese and Japanese readings called onyomi and kunyomi.)  Japanese syntax is SubjectObjectVerb.and is aided by postpositionals called particles or joshi in Japanese.  A good book on grammar should have ample examples of this.  And, the other difficulty is verbs and their conjugations.  Learning hiragana will help you with this, you will see.  Just realise that you are going to have to put some time in to learn it.\nI found that teachers can help with the kinds of things that we learn in school.  Reading and writing kanji would be one of the things that I found classes helpful with.  But, it was a college class on Japanese overall.   And, also friends in particular native speakers will inform you of your shortcommings.  They are teachers.\nI taught Japanese in college here and basically you need to know hiragana.  Katakana is used like we use italics for foreign words and for emphasis.  It is the same syllables as hiragana over again. Learn hiragana first.\nI basically taught Japanese grammar as I thought that the most important  to learn and yes there are various levels of politeness but you only need to learn one to start and the verbs and endings that go along with that.  You will learn the others almost automatically.  As Japanese is frought with polite expressions.\nI repeat  you need to learn the postpositionals (particles) and the verb conjugations... knowing hiragana will help you with this.
231024
English is regarded as the most difficult, due to its huge number of words (up to 200,000), complexity of grammar (derived from both Latin and Germanic) and haphazard rules.\n\nBy comparisom, Japanese is NOT difficult. It looks complicated because it is written differently from English, and yes, there are about 4,000 characters to learn in everyday use. But it's not that hard to learn spoken Japanese. The grammar is simple and the rules are very consistent.\n\nKind regards.
67304
Being that in Japan you can be paid $50 on up per hour to teach english, with absolutely no ability to speak Japanese.  Something that valuable suggests exposure to language is a key step to learning or improving.   In Spain I learned quite a bit of Spanish students students that wanted to practice their english by speaking to me.  They get feedback and learn pronunciation first hand. Conjugation is important. If you want to speak another language to somebody then you will have to know your past, present, future tenses, combined with singular, plural or  we us they you are almost always used in any conversation so they are also important.  If you are already fluent in english try using spell/grammar checkers that comes with whatever word processor you use.  You learn from your errors that are found, and from the suggested corrections to these errors.
103229
There are tons and tons of similarities between these languages. I am learning Korean and Japanese and I speak Turkish and Azeri fluently. I am overwhelmed by how much these languages are similar to the languages I use everyday.
815150
Are you a high school student? If so, AFS has a excellent program. I went on it and it was great! Heads up though- deadlines for next year are really soon. If you're a college student, I recommend Tokyo International University or Kansai Gaidai as they have both excellent programs. Keep in mind, most programs recommend or require you to take Japanese for at least a year. In either case, you should be talking with an advisor or school counselor- they can tell you what you need.
280468
Unless you are extraordinarily good at learning languages quickly, there is no way you will be able to learn French in 2 months.  At most you'll be able to learn some conversational phrases.  It's cheaper just to buy book that translates English to french and talk to the locals.  You'll probably learn faster that way too.
45634
Japanese for Dummies... great book. Otherwise, I'd suggest getting a human teacher. I take Japanese in school... and I find it easier than Spanish. Imagine, no future tenses. Easy words. Easy sentence-structures. It's... awesome. I suggest you go and find a living-person to be your teacher. ^_^ Or take a trip to Japan for a month, you'll pick up Japanese really fast, then!\n\nHiragana has 46 characters\nKatakana has 45 characters\nKanji has too many characters
1179542
not very long. as i see it the language only consists of numbers and the learn yourself  chinese pamphlet is widely available from your local carry out shop
914421
Yes, it needs to be from the perspective of your native language. For example, Portugese is much easier for a Spanish speaker to learn than it is for and English or Chinese speaker to learn.\n\nJapanese is often pointed to as the most difficult language for English speakers to learn. This is because it differs from English on several significant scales:\n\n- Family Relationship: There's a "family tree" (and also a wave diagram) of the Indo-European languages, based on what languages developed from others and somwhat on where they came in contact and had significant exchanges. It's generally assumed that you'll have an easier time learning a language that's near your branch on the family tree. Japanese is not even ON this tree.\n\n- Vocabulary: Languages that share similar vocabulary are often considered easier to learn. Japanese contains many loanwords from English, but this is not the same thing as having authentically similar vocabulary related to the languages being, um, related. The vast majority of Japanese vocabulary sounds nothing at all like any words you already know. This makes memorization of vocabulary much harder.\n\n- Writing system. Japanese has a very simple phonetic (speech sound) system and a very straightforward way to "spell" words that makes it almost impossible to misspell or mispronounce a word. HOWEVER, they ALSO have over 2,000 "kanji" that one must know to be literate, and no text for adults is written in the easy simple phonetic alphabets, it's written with the super complicated kanji. Each kanji is a "pictogram" that is an extremely abstract picture of a concept. Each kanji has multiple pronunciations and meanings, which you must guess from the context or the other kanji it appears with in combination words. It takes Japanese students all of compulsory education (through highschool) to learn all of these kanji, and THEY already know the meanings of the spoken words in Japanese. YOU must learn the meaning and pronunciation in addition to the crazy complicated lines.\n\n- Syntax, for at least three reasons:\n1. Word order. This is true for many languages, not just Japanese, but I'll mention it because it's just one more difficulty. English is an "SVO" language- we say "The boy eats the cake." Japanese, however, is an "SOV" or "verb-final" language: in their word order, one would say "The cake eats the boy." You run into different structures when constructing more complicated sentences, too.\n\n2. Particles. There are little grammatical speech helpers in Japanese that don't conceptually translate well to English. I guess other languages have this too, but it's just one more complication to the extremely foreign syntactical structure.\n\n3. English and Japanese are on opposite ends of the Low Context ------- High Context continuum. English is Low Context. This means that it is IN MY SPEECH that I tell you who is doing what when where why how with definite articles and other relevant grammatical markers, and you'd better not leave anything out! Japanese, however, is extremely High Context. This means that the Japanese sentence for "I killed him" is exactly identical to the sentence that means "they killed her," "you killed me," "his brother killed my aunt," "that dog killed the president," and "Aaron Burr killed President Lincoln." Knowing which of these sentences is dependent entirely on context: have you just mentioned your aunt, or are you viewing a news report, in essence what are you talking about? However, I personally think this makes Japanese a comfortably ambiguous, gentle, and forgiving language, and actually makes it EASIER to communicate in.\n\nThis said, I have taken three years of Japanese, and it was incredibly interesting, and not too terribly hard. All humans have the same kinds of brains, so we are n
147993
Get a book first. Learn some basic stuff (couple of nouns, verbs, adj...etc) and see if you have anyone that speaks the language around you. \nReading Roomaji (the way pronounciation is written) is pretty easy. "fu" is "fu" in Roomaji, and never "f" or "ph" like English (this used to confuse the hell out of me when I was younger).\nIf not, going to Japan is the best way. Oh yeah, you'll learn fast (esp, "kore ikuradesuka?")
464645
You should first know your learning style: can you learn from a language CD, person, book, etc.\n\nFocus on how you learn best.  If you can pick up differences in speech from a CD, Barnes and Noble/ Borders etc sell some really good tutorials.  Pimsleur is a set I have had success with.\n\nNext find a person or circumstance you can practice the verbal skills you are picking up.  Asian Societies/Japanese societies, etc.  practice. practice and practice some more.\n\nAs far as the written.  Pick up a set of books that teach written Japanese.  Start with Hiragana, then katagana, and finally Kanji.
83250
Try Japanese for Dummies or take a class.
312989
Hi,\nHebrew as a second language...interesting.  I am multi-lingual and have noticed things about learning new languages.\n\nYou have already been supplied answers like:\n\n1) study\n2) immersion!!\n3) CD's, books, teachers\n4) speak to survive!\n5) stoned?\n\nThese suggestions are rated here:\n\n5 is useless...it just makes you think you're learning something when you're just wasting time.\n\n1 & 3 have been know to work but not rapidly.\n\n2 & 4 both work and work rapidly.  \n\nNow how to get there.  The language you intend to learn is of no consequence;  that is these concepts work with any language.\n\nLearning through chat rooms will gain you nearly nothing.  \n\nBeing younger is a distinct advantage.  If you are between 5 and 8 you will probably learn faster than those of other ages. \n\nYou need to live daily with those that exclusively speak your intended (new) language.  Having a person that speaks your native language fluently around is as much a hinderance as it is a benefit.  Optimally you'll have limited access to this person but have constant access to those who are only familiar but not fluent in your native language.  This forces you to do some of the language thinking.  Thinking in the new language helps you learn.  If you think you can learn without speaking out loud you are missing a large portion of the language learning process as well.  You need to say things out loud to people who will be attempting to understand you.  If they do, then you have positive reenforcement that will reward your efforts...and negative reenforcement for confusing or unclear communication.  When you mangle a sentence in your new language (which you will) you may see the listener wince telling you that you made a mistake.  This immediate feedback is most valuable in your learning.  Acceptance of your sentence and understanding from the listener is both rewarding and immediate and helps you learn that much faster.\n\nAfter you find yourself thinking in your new language, you are on your way.  Speak out loud, practice saying things that you hear, these are the two things that children constantly do that adults find annoying but are necessary for rapid learning.\n\nOops...I didn't mean to write another book.\n\nGood luck in your Hebrew endeavor.  I hope you're not just entering this lightly (e.g. because this cute guy is taking Hebrew too xP ) but ready for a lifelong commitment to knowing and understanding a new language and culture.
490437
How long does it take to prepare for the\nIELTS Exam?\nIt depends on your level of English, how hard you study and\nhow easy it is for you to learn English. The suggested times\nbelow are for guidance only (some people may take longer):\n\nElementary 9 months 11 months\nPre-Intermediate 7 months 9 months\nEarly Intermediate 4 months 6 months\nIntermediate 2 months 4 months\nUpper Intermediate A few weeks 1 month
1038827
In addition to learning to talk to native speakers of the language, studying a foreign language can also help you increase your English vocabulary (especially if you study a language like French from which we have borrowed so many words) and improve your English grammar. It also generally makes you more open-minded.\n\nBut here's another benefit of foreign language study that hasn't been mentioned: it protects you from Alzheimer's and dementia in old age. That's right! Studies have shown that elderly people who speak more than one language are less likely to develop Alzheimer's. In fact, bilingualism appears to protect the brain from neurological problems resulting in dementia as well. Furthermore, elderly people who continue to learn new things, and especially those who study a foreign language, have a better memory than those who don't. I suppose it's the "use it or lose it" factor. If you keep learning, your brain keeps building neurological connections. If you don't, the old ones fade without being replaced by new ones.\n\nSo don't give up your foreign language studies! Try to find a local group such as the Alliance Française where you can speak with native Francophones and others who, like you, are interested in improving their grasp of the language. I'm sure there are native Japanese speakers around your area somewhere, as well! You might even consider exchanging English lessons to Japanese students of ESL in exchange for Japanese lessons. I'm sure there would be plenty who would jump at the chance!