Feedback on Pimsleur and Japanese and Russian

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ironfist
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Feedback on Pimsleur and Japanese and Russian

Postby ironfist » Mon Oct 08, 2018 12:10 am

Howdy,

I want to have a discussion about why, after having done Pimsleur Japanese 3 and Pimsleur Russian 3, I know way more Japanese than what I understand with Russian.

To start, I want to give my thoughts on the two.

Japanese. I started learning Japanese in high school. I halted for a while, but then started it up a bit later. It's feasible that my mind learned how Japanese works and now whatever I learn fits in with that. I learned a bit outside of Pimsleur, but those lessons covered 90% of what I learned elsewhere. So really, my Japanese is Pimsleur. When I finished 3, I could talk to Japanese people for about a minute before it got to a spot where I had no idea what they were saying. Seriously my only complaint is that basically all of them said don't be so formal, say te iru instead of masu.

Russian. Not including in college when I learned to read Russian, I didn't know anything other than a few words before I started studying it. Unlike Japanese which I started in high school, I waited 2 decades later to learn Russian. I did 3 lessons a day, 5 days a week, and barely retained anything. I had to repeat them over and over again. Conceivably my mind was just like, no, this language makes no sense. So I was starting from scratch on a language that was different from everything I had ever studied. Maybe in a week I would get through 4 lessons total. You know how I said I can talk for like a minute in Japanese before I get stuck, with Russian, I can get to about two sentences and then I'm stumped.

The thing with Russian is that I can say more complicated sentences. I can string verbs and nouns together. I can say I think he wants to go to Moscow to buy something. In Japanese, I have no idea how to say that.

Now I have a few ideas as to why I learned more Japanese than Russian:

1) I started learning Japanese earlier so I just get it.

2) Russian is harder.

3) Pimsleur Japanese is more basic than Russian. Check this out, with literally two exceptions, every sentence is (something ga/wa/ni whatever ni/de/o masu). The two exceptions are can you go to the store and buy some ice and come back, and by that time my Japanese will be better. This brings me to my boundary with Japanese. Upon learning ( --- wa --- o --- masu) you can say the stuff you want as long as you know the words. WHen the lessons don't go beyond that, you don't really "learn" Japanese. That being said, I pretend I know Japanese a lot better than I do by skipping subjects and creating verb endings on the fly that I don't really know, and I am understood. With Pimsleur Russian, you learn way more complicated stuff, you learn how to use many verbs in a sentence, which you don't in Japanese. Some of my pretend fluency comes from the fact that when I want to say something, I barely have to remember it, I know it all. With Russian, I speak a few words, then I think for a while what the next word is... and that's basically how I talk.

BUT, I do not judge my progress in a language by how difficult of things I can say, actually I look at how long I can talk to people. I have had (very short) conversations in Japanese with people before. I have never really had a conversation in Russian that didn't involve me pretending I knew what they were saying. I don't mean like Japanese where I don't get a word or two, I mean like I am unsure what everything they said was (I probably knew some words just hadn't learn those forms yet).

So, is Japanese easier for me because I learned it first? Or because it's less hard than Russian? Or because Pimsleur Japanese teaches you more than Russian?

Recently I noticed they make Japanese 5 and Russian 4. Does anyone here have any experience with them?
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Kamlari
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Re: Feedback on Pimsleur and Japanese and Russian

Postby Kamlari » Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:58 am

Just to SPEAK Japanese at an elementary level (A1 or A2) is much easier than to speak Russian.
1. Japanese pronunciation is easier (if you ignore pitch accent)
2. Less word forms to remember, particularly if you stick to polite forms (-masu, -desu)
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1. There’s only one rule to rule them all:
There are no Rule(r)s.
2. LISTEN L2, read L1. (Long texts)
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Deinonysus
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Re: Feedback on Pimsleur and Japanese and Russian

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Oct 16, 2018 8:56 pm

I didn't get nearly as far as you in Pimsleur Japanese or Russian (about half-way through Unit 1 of each), but I found the opposite to be true. I had a much easier time with Russian than Japanese.

I think this mostly came down to syntax. The Russian syntax was fairly intuitive. Here's a noun, here's a verb, here's an adjective. There are cases but I'm used to that from German.

However, the Japanese phrases are fairly long and the syntax with particles is a bit more alien. It's probably worse because you're starting with very formal language.

I ended up having to repeat most of the Japanese lessons, but I didn't need to repeat the Russian lessons very much.

Russian pronunciation is a little bit tougher but Japanese has its own difficulties if you want to try to pronounce everything just right.

I've finished Icelandic Unit 1, Hebrew Unit 1 (and maybe 2 as well?), French 1-5, and German 1-4. I also have worked on the first units of Danish, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish, and Korean. There might be others I missed. I got a lot of those from my library so I didn't have to live in a cardboard box.

The only courses where I needed to frequently repeat lessons were Japanese and Korean. I would call those more difficult than the other ones I mentioned, at least for an English speaker.
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