BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Duolingo isn’t especially good for Japanese. It works better for languages more similar to English in sentence structure where you’re making more simple substitutions between English and foreign words.
I second WaniKani as being good for learning kanji, but for grammar I think an old-school textbook/workbook is really helpful in learning the basics. I like Genki I & II as a grammar tutorial but there are others like Minna no Nihongo that others like more.
TotallyNotJohnSmith@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Heh. Same thing for Rosetta Stone. I tried that before moving to Japan, and it was too much “english translated” to be overly useful. I ended up with private lessons using the minna no nihongo series, and it wasn’t bad, once you get over the fact that the vocabulary (at least in the beginning) is more slated to incoming factory workers than office types. I can’t see that being overly good for self study, unless you live in country though.