What are good Japanese language courses for beginners online?

September 26, 2011 8:22 AM

What are the best online beginners conversational Japanese language resources?

I'm teaching a college-level Japanese history course in a prison. The inmates want to learn the language. What are the best online intro courses for casual learners? I know Japanese. My budget is zero, but I can make copies.

I want to teach them conversational patterns they can use and improvise. Something for travelers, rather than serious beginners is what I'm thinking. They won't care about food or manga or anime.

They are smart and motivated. This course for college credit, but the language would be just for fun with the long class starts to drag.

Anyway, I did an Ask Metafilter search for this question, but I did not come up with anything quite right. If I missed something, please direct me to that previous question.

Thanks.

posted by vincele to Education (3 answers total)

Many libraries are partnered with Mango Languages: http://www.mangolanguages.com/. I've no relationship, but dabbled a little bit via my local libraries link and it seems okay. You don't have to be at the library.
posted by idb at 8:31 AM on September 26, 2011

Not sure it's what you want but "patterns they can use and improvise" are the core of the Michel Thomas method. After the foundation and advanced courses you have a ton of confidence that you can construct your own sentences (maybe misguided because you don't have a ton of vocabulary, but very cool).
posted by fraac at 8:33 AM on September 26, 2011

It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but here are some resources:

A Logical Japanese Grammar
WordIQ Japanese Grammar
Teach Yourself Japanese
Japanese particles

The best online dictionary I've found is Nihongodict.

And Wikipedia has a surprisingly rich collection of articles about the Japanese language:

Japanese Language
Japanese Particles
Japanese Pronouns
Japanese Grammar
Japanese Honorifics
Keigo
Gender Differences in spoken Japanese
Japanese Counter Words

And there are a lot of others which are linked from those pages.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:49 AM on September 26, 2011 [1 favorite]