I've been here for a few days, and I absolutely love it, and I'm really learning something.
So, I wanted to ask two questions:
1- Is it worth going premium?
2- When I finish all the lessons, and still doing daily drills, will I be speaking ,not fluent, but a good japanese?(Good enough to travel to Japan and actually be able to communicate and understand a little bit of the language?
Thanks!
2
Votes
+500
I'm a beginner, so I will just answer question 1. In my point of view, it is worth to go to premium only when you are at the kanji stage. In fact, as a beginner, the premium allows you to go paper to practise your writting (I believe it's like in all the languages, people write approximatively, perfection does not exist...) and let you do more than 1 quizz (but quizz is like drills, only the timing is different). However as kanji level, you have access apparently to kanji lessons or you can create your study lists with words you want to memorize.
I hope it will help you to decide ^^
5
Votes
+1250
If you are passionate about learning Nihongo, $12/month is a great value for this service. I am 75% complete, and my phonetic comprehension level for hiragana and katakana is almost equal to that of the English Alphabet. Having invested $36 overall into this product, I've progressed multiple times more than I did with $120 worth of Nihongo schoolbooks. But, as with any tool, your ability to utilize the many resources on this site determine its overall effectiveness as a personal language tutor. You must have some reason you want to learn Japanese. Don't wait for the vanilla drills to make you fluent, or at some point you will begin wasting your money. The basic drills are just that, and meant to be expanded upon. Start trying to read Japanese, and use the site-dictionary to look up words you don't understand. Then, add them to your study-list and daily drills! Its very important to see words everyday that you are trying to memorize. That is how we learned English, and its how you must learn Japanese. I'm currently adding every word from the Pokemon series into the daily drills. Lol, sounds a bit silly, but when you learn 5 or 6 new words every day in a langauge, no matter the source, you will become fluent in a very short amount of time. The average English speaker only knows around 5000 words. Thats 1/50th of the total English language, and is considered "fluent." With daily practice, and CONSTANTLY LEARNING NEW WORDS, it should only take about 3 years to become complete fluent in any language, so take heart ;) The Japanese IME is a must have for searching the dictionary and talking to, or messing with, your friends(depending on their ability to read にほんご。 Its basically a toolbar you can add to your desktop with allows you to type in Japanese. Can't imagine life without it! B) So, if you use the dictionary, build the study lists, add to your daily drills, participate in community chat, and work with the software every day, going premium is well worth it, and is a great start on the road to becoming a Nihongo Master!!!(echoes echoes echoes)
1
Vote
+250
This dfinently worth the money, I've been using all sorts of diffrent sights to learn japanese for about the last 5 years. This is the only one i've stuck with for multible reasons! 1: Its easy, and user oriented 2: It has a whole comuity of people learning it too, for basic conversations, praticing, and answering queations 3: It keeps good track of what you know, show's you how much you've improved/how well you are keeping with your studies, and keeps you coming back to learn. 4: Most importanly, This has alot of things that are extremly impotart that most sights don't teach you, or wait to long. Like Dakuten, The diffrence between Ao and Aoi, how to hear the difference between Kite and kitte, and makes learnign how to properly read and write what you learn a priority without properly knowing the word your righting first!
As to how much you'll know, I haven't finished the sight, So i can tell for certian, but You probly won't be able to travel right away to japan. HOWEVER, with the way the sight teaches, and how quickly you can acelerate yourself in this program, you'll have enough knowledge and pratice to jump into anything new that will increase your speaking abilitys. The greatest thing about this, Is it has you learn the important things you'll need to move on, AS WELL as teaching you HOW to learn and keep up with the studies!! This program is worth alot more than you might think!
