In this series, I’m going to share how you can better use your commute time for learning a foreign language. In today’s post, I will talk about the benefits of studying on your way to work or school.

The benefits of studying a language during your commute

Regularity

Your commute is a regular time slot that repeats every day. Over time, small increments of time add up to big returns. Let’s do a quick calculation of what this means. A 30 minute commute by train is 60 minutes per day. Assuming you studied Chinese every day during this time (instead of texting your friends or mindlessly browsing Facebook! not that I would ever do that ) and did the same amount study during the weekends, this amounts to 21,900 minutes a year. Not bad going! In reality, it is much easier to stick to studying during a regular commute than is putting aside time for studying.

Stress relief

I can honestly say that I now look forward to studying Japanese during my commute. When I have a bit more time, I even take the slower train to fit in a bit more learning (I know I am a bit weird for this). I’ll cover the specifics of how I study in another post, but I usually add new material in the mornings and focus on reviewing in the evening. I have found that doing something useful before I even get to work helps relieve some of the stress that comes with working in the hectic concrete jungle that is Tokyo. I feel less rushed and more at ease.

Rewiring the brain

Practically all of the apps you use on your mobile phone, especially social media and games, target the dopamine reward systems in your brain. Each new update, prize, or notification is linked to dopamine release (I once interviewed a gaming company in Singapore who openly told me they base their gaming experience on addicting their users). This might not be so bad in the scheme of things; I’d rather be addicted to Angry Birds than tobacco. But replacing these time killers with something useful (you do want to learn a language, right?) literally rewires your brain. Three months into my new schedule, I am now far more addicted to adding and mastering new words than social media. Rewiring the brain is something that interests me. The internet is such a great tool, but I feel that many of us have been led astray into wasting time and money on it instead of using its full potential for our own long-term benefit and well-being. I recommend reading a book called The Shallows, which is a fascinating (and foreboding) take on the internet’s role in neuroplasticity.

Fun

Following a regular study habit during my commute time has made my enjoy life more. I no longer view my train to work as an annoyance. It’s a marvelous part of the day where I discover new and interesting things about the Japanese language. There is also a sense of achievement as the unknown transforms into the familiar before eventually becoming an old friend.

These are just a few of the advantages of studying your target language every day during your commute. Whether you take public transport or drive, it’s safe to say that you can fit some learning time into your routine. Do you currently study during your commute? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

In the next post, I will share the method I am employing to boost my Japanese knowledge during my commute to work. Until then!

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

If anyone wants to take it up on themselves to fix the Firefox add-on go ahead.

https://github.com/peraperakun

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

My instinctual answer would be to say that it’s easy, but I’m 11+ years invested in the language already.

Well I would say that wouldn’t I?

However, I do truly believe that anyone can learn Japanese with a little time, effort and consistency.

Why speaking Japanese is easier than you might think

There’s No Tones, Easy Phonetics

Unlike say, Chinese or Thai, Japanese has no tones. One great thing about Japanese is that you can immediately use a new word and everyone will understand you. Try that with Chinese or even Korean!

With the exception of a few phonemes that don’t appear in English (Tsu and Dzu for example), there really aren’t many difficult sounds in Japanese.

In fact, Japanese is such a sound-poor language that can be challenging for Japanese people to listen to and understand foreign languages.

One note about intonation:  though it’s not a tonal language, intonation does matter in Japanese. In that way, it’s similar to how we use intonation to convey meaning in English. But it won’t make or break you being understood.

Lots of Loan Words from English

If you’re a native speaker of English, you’re in luck. There are thousands of loan words from English in Japanese, many of which are now used more than their original Japanese counterparts.

Some common examples of loan words include:

• Suupaa (Supermarket)
• Maiku (Microphone)
• Biru (Building)
• Pasokon (Personal Computer)
• Depaato (Department Store)

Basic Grammar Isn’t Too Bad

Basic grammar is easy once you get the hang of the fundamentals. Japanese is an SOV language, which differs from SVO European languages. As such, it can be a bit tricky starting out. However, because it is organized fairly logically it makes for easy learning. Verb conjugation is relatively straightforward, however one thing that causes a lot of confusion with beginners is the correct use of particles (‘ga’, ‘wo’, ‘ni’, etc).

Another good point for learning Japanese is that the verbs don’t change with the sentence subject.  For example:

• I see.  (Miru)
• He/she sees.  (Miru)
• They see.  (Miru)

Finally, unlike some European languages (French, Spanish), nouns are not masculine or feminine; they don’t have genders in Japanese. This is a godsend if you’ve ever tried to learn a language like French!

Limited Vocabulary Used in Conversational Japanese

Learning to speak conversational Japanese is actually comparable to any other language. The vocabulary used between friends and family is fairly limited.  If you put in the effort on a daily basis, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be conversational in a matter of months of living in Japan.

Practicing is Relatively Easy

Another easy aspect of Japanese is the shyness of the locals with regards to English. In my experience, Japanese people are embarrassed to use English so your efforts to learn the language will be warmly welcomed (unlike the Germans in Germany who always want to speak English!).

Reading and writing Japanese can be difficult

The writing system in Japanese is often characterized as complex, which is a fair assessment. Japanese uses 3 different ‘alphabets’ in writing: hiragana, katakana and kanji.

Hiragana and Katakana

The first of these two alphabets are actually phonetic alphabets: Hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is used for native Japanese words, while katakana is used to write loan words.

They can both be learned in a single day of dedicated study, so it shouldn’t be too intimidating. There are a few characters people commonly mix up, but you can find good mnemonics for these as well.

Kanji

While I maintain that learning to speak Japanese is straightforward, reading is pretty difficult. Very difficult, even. To read Japanese, you must master 1000s of Chinese characters (known as the kanji).

Further, and to make matters worse, there are multiple ways to pronounce any given kanji (kun yomi and on yomi) so it’s a long old road to literacy. It’s not my intention to scare you away here… Again, if you commit to studying the written language and put the necessary time in then you will make significant progress.

But I won’t sugarcoat it. It will take you a lot of time and effort to become literate. To paraphrase Barry Farber, when it comes to Japanese you should make speaking your hare and reading your tortoise.

There are certainly shortcuts to learning Kanji, one of which is Remembering the Kanji, which we reviewed in our best books to learn Japanese.

Keigo and Formal Japanese

Formal Japanese (Keigo) is far from normal conversational Japanese, so much so that you could almost consider it a different language. Ok, hyperbole…

That said, if your goal in using spoken Japanese is mostly to have conversations with friends, then you might not need to study this much.

Business Japanese is very different from regular conversation

Now let’s assume that you can converse with and text your Japanese friends with ease. You’ve even learned enough kanji to the extent where you’re able to read some pretty tricky texts too. So have you made it? Not just yet!

If you plan on ever working in the Japanese business world then there’s still a long way to go. You can be very functional in casual Japanese and yet useless in a business context. Go listen in on a business meeting in Japanese and feel your confidence drain away into nothing.

I think it’s not exaggerating to state that business Japanese is a distinct language of its own. It bears little resemblance to what’s commonly spoken in the bars or at home. This is of course down to politeness and technical terms to some extent, but many words are actually completely different.

When Japanese university students graduate and start their first proper jobs in the real world, they have to study business Japanese. That is, how to speak on the phone with customers, write business emails and so on.

A Real Life Example of Business Japanese

Back when I was working for a Japanese IT company, I still remember observing a young coworker’s first week on the job. He got constantly chewed out by his older sempai for his choice of wording on the phone. On Monday he was fresh and keen. By Friday, the poor kid was almost in tears! This strict treatment continued for months until he apparently reached a level of eloquence deemed acceptable.

It’s amazing to me that almost 2 decades in school doesn’t prepare native Japanese people for the business world, but I suppose the state of modern education in Asia is another post for another day.

For foreigners, mistakes will be tolerated and indeed expected. However, understanding what’s going on around you will be vital to your job success in Japan. If you are at the stage of considering a career in Japan, I recommend looking into the Business Japanese Proficiency Test (BJPT). Certification is highly prized by Japanese employers so make sure you have some evidence of your language proficiency.

Case Studies: How long did it take you to learn Japanese?

Rohan

“In my case, it took about 6 months to reach a decent level of spoken Japanese. My approach was extremely simple. I bought a ton of language courses and Japanese textbooks as well as socialising with Japanese people wherever I met them. No boring language classes! The results naturally followed and it was an extremely fun process. Definitely one of the best periods of my life so far. Of course, I was still making tons of mistakes but I was usually understood.”

Michael

“I think made the biggest strides in my Japanese at two different time periods.  The first was when I did a study abroad year in Japan in university. It was easy to make Japanese friends, and practice the language daily.  I’d say I reached a low-intermediate conversation level in that first study abroad year. 

The second big level jump was when I was working as an English teacher in Shizuoka. I gave myself two ambitious goals: pass N2; and really improve my Japanese speaking. Studying for N2 gave me the motivation to really dedicate study time to reading and understanding. But the biggest thing that helped my Japanese was shadowing native Japanese daily using Japanese podcasts. At first I could only catch words here and there, but eventually I could do entire sentences.  After just a month or two, my Japanese friends started complimenting me on how fast my accent and speaking were improving.”

Conclusion: How hard is it to learn Japanese?

Japanese Is Easy Enough To Speak; Takes Time To Learn To Read And Write

After some consideration, I would say that Japanese is an easy language to start out in. Conversation comes quickly if you study enough and put yourself out there.

However, reaching an advanced level in Japanese is a difficult mission. It’s certainly not mission impossible but it will require some serious dedication and a long process. Perhaps all languages are that way to some extent, but Japanese is deep.

Despite now working as a freelance Japanese translator for many years, I still learn something new every day.

On that note, we wish you the best of luck with your studies! If you’re looking to get serious about learning Japanese, we recommend you take a look at JapanesePod101.

What were your experiences of learning Japanese? Did you find it easy or otherwise? Let us know in the comments below!  

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

Best Paper Japanese Dictionary

Kodansha’s Furigana Japanese Dictionary

In my humble opinion, this is the best general Japanese-English dictionary for Japanese learners, from beginner to intermediate level. You can use it with just knowledge of kana, and it will take you a long way. More advanced learners will want something more substantial (see below), but the Kodansha dictionary is a good start.

Best Mobile Japanese Dictionary Apps

The Wisdom 2 English-Japanese Dictionary

Rohan: “I have been using the Wisdom Japanese-English Dictionary app for years now. It has a ton of entries, clear definitions and great example sentences. In particular, the examples come in handy for learning new terms and helping them stick. It will cost you a little bit of upfront investment, but I really rate this dictionary for study purposes. Read our full review of the Wisdom Dictionary”

iOS version
Android version

Takoboto

Mike: “I used to use the Wisdom 2 dictionary because it had the best example sentences of the Japanese dictionaries on Android.  But now I mostly use Takoboto, which has lots of great features like supporting multiple favorite lists, as well as exporting directly to Anki. The Anki export feature alone saves me hours of work.

Android version

Best Online Dictionaries

Online dictionaries have the advantage of being both free and instant. In this category, I’ll admit that there’s no clear winner in my mind. The following are all dictionaries that I use on a regular basis for my translation work:

Linguee

When I’m working at the PC, my first point of reference is now Linguee’s Japanese-English dictionary. It has an incredible number of example sentences (sourced from actual bilingual texts) for any given term that provide a deeper context than your average dictionary. The only caveat is that not all of the translations are 100% reliable so you need to have some grounding and experience in the language to suss out any possible duds.

ALC

ALC is a well-known publisher of language-related materials in Japan. They also provide a great online dictionary with a lot of example sentences. This used to be my main tool until Linguee came along.

Kotobank

Kotobank is another useful dictionary. I generally use it for quick lookup and for Japanese-Japanese definitions when I want to know a more exact meaning of a term. It is formerly known as the Yahoo Japanese-English Dictionary.

Jisho

This one is good for the basics, but doesn’t have example sentences (which are super helpful for learning).

Best Japanese dictionary browser plugin

Last but not least (!) is the Perapera Japanese Popup Dictionary provided by yours truly.

2019 Update: Sorry, we had to stop continuing support for our Japanese dictionary browser plugin because of time commitments and lack of donations.  We hope to someday bring it back to life!

So there you have it. I encourage you to check out the dictionaries that I mentioned here and see which one best fits your situation. If you are still a beginner, one solid dictionary such as Kodansha should be sufficient for starting out. You can always diversify your collection at a later stage.

What are your favourite Japanese lookup resources? Am I missing anything here? Let me know in the comments below!  Also check out our list of Japanese textbook recommendations.

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

Tracking back a little, if you read this website, then you will be aware that here are certain timeless principles to follow when it comes to learning a foreign language. Namely:

Learn new vocabulary.
Listen a lot.
Read a lot.
Find interesting content that will motivate you to stay immersed in the language.

And so on. These principles are fundamental and unchanging. And you know what? Maybe in years gone by, they may have been enough. But things have changed.

So what has changed exactly? OK I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m not about to unveil a secret new method of learning that beats all the others. That would be dishonest. The basics are still the same.

No, what I’m referring to is the massive brain damage that is going on these days. OK not literally, but I’d estimate that 90% of us are total scatterbrains trying to achieve too much all at once. We are constantly distracted by our phones, internet sites and a hundred other things. The challenge is clear. We need to reclaim our brains in order to push ahead with mastering another language.

1. Turn off your smartphone

Listen, I understand how much you love your iPhone, Android or whatever zany phone model you are a fan of. Admittedly, I spend way too much time on my iPhone. But when it comes to concentrated study, smartphones are a killer. Turn it off. It will only serve to constantly interrupt your study sessions with phone calls, texts and other random updates. Who is in charge here? You or your phone? Now and then, you have to show your smartphone who is boss.

2. Massively cut down on social media

While many of you might manage to follow the first point and turn off your phone for an hour or two, things are about to get real now. I’m telling you to massively cut down on your  social media. Facebook and Twitter are perhaps the biggest existing distractions for the modern language learner. Any time spent on these mindless sites is time you could have spent learning Chinese, Swahili or whatever cute language you are currently dating.

And don’t give me that “I need to enjoy my life” line. Nobody really enjoys looking at Facebook. Surprisingly enough, language study is much more fun once you get a regular routine going.

3. Go old school

Next, you need to go old school, by which I mean that you should read physical books now and then. I’m a fan of digital books as much as anyone else (hell, I was reading interesting Japanese ebooks before my Japanese friends!), but going old school can help your brain to recover from all the electronic stimulation that is confusing it. Going old school will stop the rot that is turning your concentration levels into something more fitting to a goldfish than a human. Read good books in your target foreign language if you can. If you aren’t at that level yet, then some moderately challenging reading in your native language is just fine.

4. Meditate

Meditation has been shown to help improve concentration levels and memory retention, both skills that directly translate into more effective language acquisition. Even 5-10 minutes a day can make a noticeable difference, so give it a shot. If you are new to meditation, I strongly recommend Finding Peace in a Frantic World as a great introduction.

5. Show up

Honestly, I’d conservatively estimate that showing up is 80% of the language learning game. It’s probably much more than that, but 80% is a nice round number that everyone understands. Let’s say that 20% of your results come from the method you follow and the quality of materials you use (good job you have this blog to help you with those!).

Either way, what matters is putting in the study time, day after day, week after week. I don’t care how much talent for languages you believe yourself to be lacking. You will make progress. And, over time, your brain will change with regular practice. Months into a solid learning regime, you will begin to feel the difference in your thinking. You will hear the sounds of the language differently. You will start singing in the shower. It’s a beautiful thing to experience and it makes you feel more alive.

Fin

Hopefully, the above hints give you something to play with. Nobody is perfect. We all procrastinate and fritter away time. And that’s OK. But if you are regularly missing your language goals and getting frustrated, then reclaiming your brain is a solid first step on the road to fluency.

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

Learn in Your Car is a cool series that I’ve been meaning to do a review of for a while. There’s no time for that tonight (I just finished work and it’s almost 3am). However, the other day I noticed that the complete Learn in Your Car audio courses for both Chinese and Japanese are currently available for free with a 30 day Audible trial.

Over 10 hours of quality audio for nothing. That’s a pretty good deal if I ever saw one.

You can download the Learn in Your Car programs from below:

Learn in Your Car Japanese
Learn in Your Car Chinese

And yes, we are still working on the next plugin updates…watch this space!

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

Reading lots of of authentic content is a vital step on your way to fluency in Chinese. Luckily for us, it’s now possible to buy foreign language titles from the Kindle Store, including Chinese, making language acquisition much more convenient than ever before. In today’s post we will give you a short overview of how to go about downloading electronic books (ebooks) in Chinese language from your the Kindle Store.

What do I need?

All you need is a Kindle (any model since 2010) or another device that supports the Kindle Store such as an iPad, smartphone or an Android tablet. That together with an Amazon account is all that’s required.

How can I download Kindle books in Chinese?

Getting Chinese ebooks actually works in the same way as downloading Kindle books in English. You don’t need to live in China or Taiwan. Just access the Kindle store and find something you like! You can browse Chinese e-book titles here:

Click here to browse Chinese Kindle Books on Amazon.

Great Selection in 2019

When this article was originally written in 2015, there were only a little over 1,000 Chinese titles to choose from in the Kindle store. Currently (June 2019), there are more than 50,000 titles you can buy for your kindle. That is a massive increase of Chinese books available on Kindle. Another win for Chinese language learners!

Simplified or traditional?

Most of the books we looked at on the Kindle store were in simplified Chinese, with traditional Chinese occasionally available too. Frustratingly, Amazon don’t currently have an official way of distinguishing between the two typesets so you have to check the book description to be sure.

What genres are available?

You can find Chinese ebooks for a number of different genres, including fiction staples such as horror and romance, as well as self-development and business. There is even a selection of comics available in Chinese. As a caveat, I’m not a big manga fan so we have no idea if the comics are good or not.

With each passing year, technology is transforming the nature of language learning as we know it. We certainly live in exciting times. So what are you waiting for? Check out the Chinese section of the Kindle Store now!

Looking for more audio material in Chinese? Read our review of Chinese Class 101.

Do you have any ebook recommendations? Feel free to write them in the comments below!

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

Updated July 2019

1. Talk To Me In Korean

Chances are if you’re studying Korean, you already know Talk To Me In Korean. It’s an amazing resource for Korean learners. The site is updated regularly, offering a ton of content that is both free and of extremely high quality. Lessons come in a variety of formats, including video, audio and PDFs. It’s a truly fun experience learning with TTMIK. Highly recommended.

2. KoreanClass101 (free trial)

KoreanClass101 is another great resource for Korean learners. You can sign up now for their free trial from this link.

3. Naver Korean-English Dictionary

The NAVER Korean-English dictionary is a solid online resource that you can access for free. Plenty of example sentences are included to help consolidate what you learn. This should be a daily staple for your Korean studies.

4. italki

Italki is a great place to find a language partner for free. The interface makes it easy to link up with native Korean speakers who are learning English and exchange your language knowledge in a mutually beneficial way.

It is also possible to find Korean teachers on Italki – in fact, we highly recommend doing this as learning with a personal tutor will be a better experience overall. You will obviously have to pay for this option though.

5. Lang 8

Another fantastic site built around the exchange concept. You can get your Korean writing corrected by helping others with their written English. The system works very well – so much so that we wish we had thought of this idea first!

6. FSI Korean courses

As they are now 100% public domain, you can access the Foreign Service Institute’s Korean courses for free. The Basic course is thorough although quite dated. Expect more formalistic and old-fashioned language with this course, which is perhaps not so bad if you are planning a trip to North Korea!

7. 99Korean

99Korean is an entertaining YouTube channel thats covers many aspects of the Korean language. Personally, I wouldn’t use these videos as my primary resource but they serve as a light accompaniment that can help consolidate the knowledge learned elsewhere. 99Korean also offers a free mobile app that conveniently puts all the lessons in one place.

8. How To Study Korean

A nifty little site that offers a complete course on mastering Korean grammar and vocabulary. Totally free.

9. Korean dramas

Watching Korean dramas is a pleasant way to enjoy the Korean language. No need to worry too much about how much you understand, but exposing yourself to material intended for native Korean speakers will pay off huge dividends over time. Drama Fever offers a lot of different Korean series. Check it out here.  Update:  Drama Fever is no longer online, but you can watch some free sample episodes of Korean dramas on Rakuten Viki.

10. Sogang University courses

We haven’t used these courses but they look pretty good and they are 100% free. Take a glance to see if the learning style suits you.

11. Duolingo Korean

Duolingo make some of the best free language learning apps out there, and the Korean one is pretty good — though not perfect. It’s a good place to learn the basics, or brush up on things you’d already learned.

So there you have it, our top 10 resources to learn Korean for free. Try out some of these sites and work out which ones you prefer to use for your studies. Bear in mind that everyone is different so what works for someone else might not be the best method for you. That said, we hope you will get as much value out of these sites as we did.

Do you know of any other useful free resources for Korean? Leave a comment below!

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

Be warned, this book is aimed at intermediate learners and above! It’s not for beginners. As for the layout, it’s a parallel translation style work with English on the left and Japanese on the right. Some notes are given at the end of each chapter but for the most part you are on your own.

There are also no romaji provided, which is a plus in our humble opinion. If you are going to attempt reading Japanese literature then you should hopefully know the kana by now! The relevant furigana are given once only as is the norm in published Japanese works.

The Stories

Here are the stories included in the book.

“Concerning the Sound of a Train Whistle in the Night or On the Efficacy of Fiction” – Murakami Haruki
“A Little Darkness” – Yoshimoto Banana
“Genjitsu House” – Koike Masayo
“The Silent Traders” – Tsushima Yuuko
“Mogera Wogura” – Kawakami Hiromi
“The Maiden in the Manger” – Abe Kazushige
“Where the Bowling Pins Stand” – Ishii Shinji
“Love Suicide at Kamaara” – Yoshida Sueko

Cautionary note: Some of the material is adult in nature so avoid this book if that could offend you.

The good

– Great resource for Japanese reading practice. It will take some effort to get through each story, especially if you are on the lower side of intermediate, but it will be worth it. This is the kind of material that helps you to become comfortable with reading the “real thing” over time. You will later reap the dividends of your hard work.

– The stories are varied, challenging and entertaining all at the same time. They are also of a relatively modern nature, providing you with fairly recent examples of Japanese in use. Rest assured, there’s no Genji to be seen here, although that certainly has its place too!

– It’s nice to be able to read contemporary stories by Japanese authors such as Haruki Murakami.

The bad

– The notes provided in this book are on the sparse side. The author could have been a little bit more helpful with some of his explanations of Japanese expressions. Although you can always use a dictionary, it would have been more convenient if things were explained better.

– As we previously discussed here, listening to the audio along with the Japanese text is a great way of learning the language. A matching audio CD would have been nice for consolidating on what has been learned.

Conclusion: A solid companion on your path to Japanese literacy

If you already have a reasonable base in Japanese then Short Stories in Japanese is a logical next step in your quest for Japanese literacy. Even if you aren’t yet proficient in reading Japanese, you can always enjoy the English translations while trying to make out some of the words that you know in Japanese. Reading this book will also enrich you culturally and give you a deeper understanding of the Japanese psyche. We highly recommend it. You can buy it on Amazon.

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.

All the words of every language – in one place

Forvo is a website founded with the aim to collect “All the words in the world. Pronounced”.

They are certainly closing in on their mission as far as the major languages go. At the time of writing, there more than 3,000,000 individual pronunciations for 325 languages. This number continues to grow daily, making Forvo an indispensable tool for aiding learners with foreign language intonation. A casual browse of the site for Japanese and Korean words surprised us, nearly every term we could think of had already been recorded. For Chinese there are even various regional dialects covered. Impressive!

It’s 100% free and there’s no catch

What’s more, the site is free! I honestly don’t know how they manage it, but I’m glad that this service exists. Forvo is immensely helpful for getting instant examples of correct pronunciation from native speakers. If only we had been able to use this site when we were starting out in Chinese and Japanese! It would have made some of those tricky words and character readings much easier. One thing to note is that, on Forbo, there are no definitions of words given so you will need to use a dictionary or one of our plugins.

Request new word samples on demand

The beauty of Forvo is the way it makes use of crowdsourcing to cover immense ground. If there is no relevant pronunciation for the word you are looking for, you can simply request a pronunciation to be made. The same goes for words that are badly pronounced or have poor sound quality. Just ask for another sample. In our experience, a new pronunciation is usually uploaded within 24 hours of the request. You will be informed of the new sound file via email.

Every language learner should be using Forvo

It’s such a great site that I’d go as far as saying that it should be used by EVERYONE who is learning a language. We are not affiliated with Forvo, but we are big fans. It deserves more love from learners.

How we use Forvo

There is no set way to make use of the pronunciations on Forvo. It’s best to experiment on your own and develop your preferred course of action. We will, however, suggest a couple of methods that have been helpful for us:

1. Try, listen and try again

This is the simplest method. When you have a word in mind, navigate to the correct entry on Forvo via the search function. Once you are there, try to pronounce the word as best you can. Always pronounce aloud in your clearest voice. Next, play the audio file and compare how it sounds compared to your attempt. Then try to say the word again. Better? Keep going until you are satisfied. Perfection isn’t the aim here by the way. Decide what is “good enough” for your purposes and stop there. This kind of deliberate practise will pay off over time.

2.  Make audio flashcards.

With the help of Anki (desktop version), you can make flashcards with the audio files attached. This is truly a language learner’s dream. Having the native pronunciation will not only improve your speaking accuracy, but will also help you to remember new words you encounter. For a more in-depth guide to making audio flashcards, check out Fluent Forever (reviewed here).

Resources

Forvo
Anki

Know any other useful websites or tools for improving pronunciation in another language? Tell us in the comments section below!

Rohan

Rohan has spent years studying Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and currently lives in Japan. He created the perapera pop-up dictionary plugins to help other learners of Chinese and Japanese.