Chris wrote:Parksey wrote:I'm marginally edging towards Chinese at the moment, even if Japanese culture and the country itself interests me more.
What I think I might do though, is buy a decent, cheap-ish beginner's book for both languages and see which sustains my interest more - let's face it, even if I prefer Japan as a country, this is of little motivation to me when I'm studying in rainy Teesside.
Does anyone know any books to recommend for either language? I must stress that they must be for absolute beginners, as I've no prior experience. I think the local college does Chinese night-classes too, at least.
I use a different series of textbooks now, but the first textbook I used was called 'Japanese for busy people', which you can buy in the UK.
Just checked and you can get them from amazon UK. There are two different versions; one is written in romaji (Roman alphabet), and the other in kana (Japanese alphabet.) I would recommend the kana version, but you will need to take some time to learn the Japanese alphabet first (hiragana and katakana would be enough at this stage.) There is no point learning Japanese using the Roman alphabet, if you want to be able to read/write properly eventually.
Click
I have just made an ill-advised trip to Waterstone's without checking here for replies first and bought the first Japanese for Busy People, albeit the romanized version (and for £8 more too - bah!). Is this still a decent starting point? The main attraction for me is the worksheets in the book, as I learn much better through writing rather than reading and, in distant third, probably listening.
I have also bought a phrasebook for Chinese with some of the basics and a BBC CD/Book pack (the Active brand ones, not the Talk branded ones).
I'm going to give them a whirl tonight and see how I get on with both. My one fear is that I will get hopelessly split between two languages, instead of picking just one. My paths will get crossed and I'll be all over the place - I need to decide on one very quickly.
The good thing is, my local college does classes in both so I may do one of those part-time if I can tempt a friend into doing it with me.