Learning Japanese on a moderate budget

It has been an inordinate amount of time since my last post so here is some info that others may find useful. I already covered some books to learn Japanese. If you want an immersive leaning environment and are willing to pat with a few hundred bucks to get it you can supplement your education quite nicely with just a few items.

Genki is an integrated immersion course with materials published by The Japan Times. It is geared towards those in college with a lot of the vocabulary but it isn't as if one wouldn't need to know how to say college or physics in Japanese. The entire course materials include a textbook, workbook, CDs, flash cards etc. The Japan Times has an entire course site of useful resources. Some elementary courses at universities and colleges use the materials. Retailers have them at varying prices but you can buy them directly which ships from Japan or you can search for local retailers. Of course some of the materials can probably be found in the usual dark alleys of the internet.

JapanesePod101 is a great way to take in a short daily lesson. You can find it in iTunes or just go to their website. The basic podcast is free which is a few minutes of vocabulary or grammar with practice phases thrown in. This is a simple way to lean something new or practice in the car or at the gym. The paid memberships add access to the forums which can be useful with the community feedback. The forums are great if you are stuck on something o need help finding a tutor or school.

You gain access to the dictionary and quiz area which help to get you off of the romaji crutch. The most useful, to me at least, are the transcripts and the videos. Nothing quite like seeing the phrases on the page as you listen or watching someone speak a language.

If you have a Nintendo DS you are in luck since there are some great games that can be supplementary aids to your learning. My Japanese Coach is the most obvious. It features a quiz when you first start it up and create your profile that tests your knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, basic phrases etc. Once it determines your level it proceeds though a series of courses. These courses cover the elementary level of Japanese. I wouldn't recommend it as your only source but the writing practice, speech practice, and fast recognition of words in the mini-games are a decent supplement to Genki and JapanesePod101.

If you have the desire for true mastery, a DS, and a little cash you can do a lot worse than Zaidenhoujin Nippon Kanji Nouryoku Kentai Kouinin: KanKen DS. This game is basically a huge amount of kanji that you practice writing correctly. This is designed to prepare you for the kanji certification. This can also be useful to improve fluency even if you're not looking to be certified. There are other software options such as Kageyama Method - Dennou Hanpuku: Tadashii Kanji Kaki to Rikun. I'd also recommend checking the prices between PlayAsia and National Console Support.

Games are a good option along with movies to give yourself some immersive practice. You might as well take advantage of the fact that the games for DS, PSP, and PS3 systems are region free. Especially, with the PS3 setting up a Japanese PSN account and downloading a demo from Japan isn't that hard. Understanding what is being said in the movies or the games? YMMV

Language Instruction Part 3: Russian Books

There aren't as many good books for Russian instruction, surpassingly considering the Cold War. Saying that I can unqualifiedly recommend Live from Moscow: Russian Stage One. This is the textbook series that I learned from in college so take my recommendation with a grain of salt. The series has a textbook, workbook, audio cassettes, and VHS tapes. The textbook gets the learners toes wet with some loan words before getting into some of the grammatical differences as well as some of the more complicated subjects. The audio is used to reinforce lessons with exercises in conjunction with the workbook. The VHS tapes presents a soap operaesque story of an American visiting Russia. This reinforces the lessons of the textbook and shows how they would be used in conversation.

If you are looking for a comprehensive Russian-English Dictionary you can do much worse than this. They also do a decent job presenting the grammar and basic verbs of Russian.

Fortunately for language learners, Russian has a lot of its greatest writers who are out of copyright. You can find the odd poem by Pushkin on Gutenberg or through the links on Wikipedia. If you are yearning for a dual language printed book this may fit the bill. I personally love Mikhail Kuzmin whose books are pretty expensive if you are looking for them in print but are available on-line. He wrote on of the first gay novels in Russian, Wings.

Language Instruction: Part 1 Spanish Books

I like to spur my nieces' and nephew's interests in language. Their grades have gone up overall since they have more confidence and they are doing something they find enjoyable. The only problem is that my nieces are into Spanish and my nephew is interested in Japanese. I try to help them with the languages and am also tying to improve the Russian I learned in college.

In the spirit of Larry Ferlazzo and his list of tools I'll make lists of some of the books, websites, podcasts, etc. that are indispensable to me. Here are the Spanish books that I've bought for myself, the kids, or borrowed from the library.

I know plenty of people don't have the funds to buy all the books and some people just hate books versus on-line materials. I've always liked books as a primary or secondary source of instruction since they are portable, easily browsed, and can be a nice change of pace.

I think a comprehensive textbook is always a good place to start. The Ultimate Spanish Beginner-Intermediate gives a decent coverage of Spanish. It does cover vosotros and the intricacies of the Spanish of Spain, as the reviewer on Amazon points out the Spanish of Latin America is the most common. It's very comprehensive and worth the expense.

Spanish Now! is a flawed but serviceable textbook series. There are some typos and inconsistencies which can get in the way of a true understanding but it's good for the price. If you are really tight on funds you might be able to find Ultimate Spanish or another text in the library or use the Internet sites I'll list as primary references.

Once you have a decent textbook books on verbs and grammar are a good way to refine you understanding. The Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs is a great way to familiarize yourself with common verbs and their conjugations. The included CD is good for getting some practice with the verbs.

501 Spanish Verbs is an old standby, it is widely available in most bookstores. There isn't a CD just common verbs conjugated for study.

Only a brave few actually enjoy grammar but it is a necessary evil. Spanish Grammar for Independent Learners is a good reference in an easy to follow format. If you can deal with a more regimented format Spanish Grammar is an inexpensive option.

Once one has a decent foundation and has refined their understanding of verb conjugation and grammar the last part needed for the basics is a good dictionary. The cock of the walk would be the Oxford Spanish Dictionary which has CDs, Latin American and European Spanish words and phrases, etc. The only problem is unless you have a lot of money lying around you'd do better with a cheap dictionary and some web pages.

Short stories, poems, novels are all great ways to see the language in use. Spanish Short Stories is a good parallel text suitable for a intermediate learner. For the more advanced learner there is Short Stories in Spanish. Poetry is a great way to see the possibilities in meter and turn of phrase of a language.

Of course who someone would prefer to read is very subjective, personally I love reading Frederico Garcia Lorca. There are quite a lot of manuals, novels et al. that have been translated into Spanish so one isn't limited to works created in Spanish but can also pick up works that you've already read in English. Whether one is looking for Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, or Stephen King.

I'll write up the Japanese and Russian books as well as the podcasts, web sites, computer programs etc. If you have any suggestions leave a comment.

Google: Statistical machine translation

ArsTechnica has a mini review of Google's translation service. They have switched from the rules based machine translation that they used to have and most machine translation services use.

I remember studying linguistic rules and statistical machine translation methods in college. Like the article suggests neither one is great but they can work well enough for someone to feel their way to the actual translation. The linguistic rules approach parses texts into an intermediary state using former grammar rules of the source language. The intermediary text is transformed into the target language former grammar rules of the target language.

The main problem with the linguistic rules approach is that it is similar to taking a sentence and marking it a parse tree and rearranging it into the parse tree of the target language and then changing it word for word. Another major problem is the grammars do not do too well with slang since there may not be a direct translation. The other problem is one of syntax there may be structures missing from the source that are needed in the target. For example, to properly translate "I went to the store" from English to Russian one needs to know if I traveled on foot or in a vehicle, since that changes the verb.

The statistical approach basically uses an algorithm to weigh the probability of the part of speech and/or meaning of a word. The statistics can be modified with the help of volunteers marking up a sentence or providing a more accurate translation. Given enough corrections and a large enough corpora the system can improve. Google appears to be using their index of web pages as a potential corpora and users of the service as the volunteers instead of the usual college student looking for beer money.

Googles approach reminds me of a few journal articles on using web pages as an inexpensive means to develop a corpus. Most corpori are rather expensive proprietary collections of text of language in everyday use. The statistical approach seems like a no brainer for Google since they have a corpori lying around and harnessing users even a poor algorithm is bound to get better. The linguistic rules approach only gets better with the development of more elaborate syntactical and transformative rules. The only question is what took Google so long to figure this out?

The Becky

The Language Log Blog just announced the winner of the Goropius Becanus Prize. More accurately, Jeff Nunberg announced it on Fresh Air. The award goes to a person or organization that has "outstanding contributions to linguistic misinformation.

I'd have to agree that this is a very good choice. I found the assertions that I heard in her radio interview on Radio Times to be just someone trying to cash in on stereotypes in disregard to actual scientific studies. For the sake of convenience here are the search results for articles talking about the "scientist" on the LLB.

The fact that she got so much attention and that actual linguistic research doesn't get too much of love is probably due to the preference for sound bite research that affirms stereotypes. The Northern City Vowel Shift didn't exactly burn up the phone lines on the radio. Still people have an interest in the sideshows of linguistics and science, researchers just have to do a better job of bringing people into the real show. A couple of letters to the editor or some such to say, "that was interesting load of crap but the true research is even more fascinating." I mean the fact that most studies show men talk just as much or more than women raises a number of interesting questions about gender roles and power. The stereotypes are not only wrong but pretty boring.