Free japanese learning sites.

Decided to make this since some of you seem interested in learning japanese, here's a list of some sites i'd reccomend:

The japanese page is very useful for learning hiragana, katagana, and kanji if you don't have a textbook, and in the case of hiragana even if you do,it is also useful for learning words, but it's not my suggested:
http://thejapanesepage.com/

While not full of bells and whistles, imo this is the best way to memorize hiragana, katagana and kanji after you've learned them, and arguably is useful for trial and error learning:
https://www.msu.edu/~lakejess/kanjigame.html

NHK world has the best japanese learning tool for beginner speech that you can get for free imo:

http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/


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If you want to get a textbook, i HIGHLY suggest getting the genki series as well as the audio cd's, though they aren't cheap, they are imo the best way to learn japanese bar none, genki has the benefit of being made by a japanese news publocation, as well as being certified by the japanese government as a very useful tool for foreigners trying to learn the language, it should be fairly easy to pass the JLP4-JLP2 with genki, possibly the JLP1 as well.

While genki is good for kanji as well, i suggest the basic kanji books 1-2 for basic kanji learning, it explains how kanji works in detail.

If anyone wants to add anything to the original post, post it and i'll add it.

If you need some help with the language post here and those of us a little more experienced will see if we can help(no guarantees here).

What do you think of About.com? They also offer free Japanese lessons.

Yeah, I also watch NHK TV. Mr.K.

The first step is to learn the Alphabets and the logograms, no?

(I am one of the few Idiots who thought Japanese could be learned in a fortnight. Takes years, though.)

Also, about Hiragana, Katagana. Are there letters that doesn't sounds the same that are not available in one of them or vice versa? (for e.g: 'ß(Zs)' in German but not in English. I hope you got this question.)

And, what is the most letter system used in electronic devices(like Computer and cellphones)?

^not quoting that because this is going to be long anyway.

Japanese is a little strange compared to english, but it's probably going to be easier to learn if you know a middleastern language like arabic, or really any other language, english is rare in it's sentence structure.
Japanese has 3 writing systems, hiragana, katagana, and kanji.

Hiragana and katagana are a normal alphabet, similar to the english abc's, the kanji on the other hand is a word, an example is 七, which is しち or shichi in english text and means seven in english, kanji rarely have more than a few meanings, but the same word shichi means something different when it is in the kanji form of 質, it is the same word, but has an entirely different meaning, it should be pointed out that some kanji are only parts of words, these are on yomi kanji, and generally are meant to distinguish words meanings, kanji is only writtien alongside hiragana when it comes to words, katagana are never combined with kanji.

If your starting out, the most important thing to do is learn hiragana first, then katagana soon after (doesn't have to be immediately, but it definitely helps), hiragana is the most common non kanji text in japan, katagana is only used for english loan words such as ｺﾝﾋﾟｭｳﾀｱ, which is spelled as konpyuutaa and is exactly what it sounds like, computer.

Japanese does have a ch sound, however it does not have some sounds that are common in english, such as Q and V, katagana does have a V sound, however it is very rarely used in japanese, and is only used in loan words.

The most important things to learn first is hiragana, then a few words, katagana, and eventually kanji, kanji should not be attempted until you understand the basic sentence structure of the japanese language.

I personally am not fond of about.com, however learning a language varies depending on the learner. so what works for you may not work for me and vice versa.

japanese uses all 3 texts as well as romaji, which is english words, if you mean in video games, it would be a mix of hiragana and kanji, with some katagana involved as well.

One thing i will point out is your tecnically wrong about how long it will take to learn the language, you generally can learn a language very fast, provided you put alot of time and effort into it, an example is me, i have little to do in the day so i study alot during the day, i could easily learn it in a few months (if i stopped letting my mind wander >.>), however i can put alot of work into it, to have a general mastery of japanese, you need around 900 hours of study into it(this varies widely on your studying skill), however, to become able to get by to play a game, let's say a non mature rated rpg, you could probably do so in about 100 hours give or take of hard study


p.s. i know my last paragraph sucked in grammar, but i'm too busy to worry about it.