Reminds me of Japanese: The Spoken Language, which is what I used to learn Japanese. It's quite challenging at first but I can't think of a better way for an adult to learn the language well.
I saw Eleanor Jorden (writer of JSL) talk at Cornell, and a kid in the audience asked, "I opened a book and saw a bunch of squiggly lines!" To throw out a language's native written system is folly.
We used the Genki bookset in school, and it worked pretty well.
Japanese people take for granted that Kanji is hard and are forgiving when Westerners aren't that great at it, but it's painfully hard to listen to someone speak with non-native intonation and poor grammar.
In any case, Kanji is so visual - until I learned it many words didn't make sense to me. Knowing how to say it, but not understanding the real-underlying meaning is not fun.
As far as intonation, Japanese is one of the easiest languages with regards to that. Once you get the basics it is simple, but still you must talk with others (Japanese club, co-workers, neighbors, skype, etc) and listen to real Japanese (anime, news, etc.)
This is very true. I grew up in an area where lots of Spanish is spoken, and I learned a tiny bit myself. For me, Japanese pronunciation was trivial. My teachers were praising me right off the bat. The only difficulty I have is with my current tutor, who is bent on teaching me to pronounce the Japanese r/l the way a Japanese would. (AFAIK it's not necessary at all for understandability, just a pet peeve of hers.) I had a very different experience with French and German, so I know I'm not especially gifted at phonetics. I think the early exposure to Spanish was the key.
Anyone have an idea of how difficult it would be to do an augmented reality iPhone app that would translate these signs, etc., on the fly for you? If I were traveling, I would probably buy an iPhone just for that app.
A quick Google search turned up this NYT article [1] from 2002 about the idea. Does this exist in a retail app already?
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/technology/what-s-next-poi...
I do agree that people who use this approach are behind others in reading / writing performance. Indeed, it took me awhile to catch up. But fortunately this is something you can pick up on your own fairly well.
On the flip side, to be brutally honest, 99% of the people (that I've met anyway) who come through programs that focus on reading / writing sound horrible when they speak. They tend to suck at grammar, their intonation is all wrong and have a very hard time creating complex sentences. It could just be the sampling that I've interacted with but I can always tell the difference immediately between a JSL student and someone who focused on reading / writing.
Why is this important? It depends on your job / life but I personally spend my most important moments interacting with people via speech, not text. I'd much rather create a strong impression in person up front. It makes all the difference.
That said, there are vanishingly few times in life when an engineer is required to handwrite anything other than their name and address, but I have to speak to people constantly. When I do, I'm consistently reminded how fortunate I am that I learned contextually appropriate Japanese, a strong foundation in grammar, and proper polite Japanese (something many American Japanese programs just abandon on the excuse "bah, that's hard and you don't really need it" -- which sounds great until we're being introduced to the mayor and you say "Yo gramps where's the crapper?").
That is not an exaggeration, by the way. I spent the next hour apologizing for her. (For students of the language: ジジ、トイレはどこ？ vs. standard Japanese トイレはどこですか？ vs. in consideration of the fact that the mayor vastly outranks both of us すみませんが、お手洗いはどちらにあるかご存知ですか？)
I share your not-too-bright-6th-grader feelings during the 1% of the time I actually have to write something with my hands. ;-)
I studied Japanese for many years and always had the Kanji wall. It was daunting and hindered my progress. In the end, it made Japanese seem mysterious and not really possible for western-minds to grasp.
I used RTK and got through Kanji in four months, now I focus on sentences and reading wherein I speak out loud while reading. I also speak with my family in Japanese as much as possible (this is my primary reason for studying).
In the end, you must treat the language as a living language and understand all forms it is presented in. But, you already get this point, just saying it for others. :)