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| Japanese Now! 8.0 | 
| List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $15.00
You Save: $24.99 (62%)
Buy New/Used from $1.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 8 reviews)
Sales Rank: 6609
Category: Software
Publisher: Transparent Language
Studio: Transparent Language
Brand: Transparent Language
Label: Transparent Language
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Macintosh, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 95
Media: CD-ROM
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 10.5 x 8.8 x 2.5
Model: JE-R08-2-CD
UPC: 744573057268
EAN: 0744573057268
ASIN: B00004NHLF
Release Date: March 24, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Participate in real dialogs with native Japanese speakers at your own speed. You'll hear how words are pronounced, see the spelling, word meanings, and actually hear yourself speaking. In no time, you'll be confidently conversing in Japanese!
Amazon.com Review
Using conversations on QuickTime video combined with sentence-by-sentence and word-by-word translations, this software instantly immerses you in practical situations, such as ordering food or traveling by train--exactly what you need before you head to Tokyo next month, right? Best-suited to students who've already had about one year of Japanese, this CD-ROM applies "authentic language" and "communication gap" exercises--widely used university approaches. In lay speak, this means you will: - Watch videos of native Japanese speakers interacting naturally with each other (the acting's not half bad, either)
- Read printed versions of their dialogs
- Listen to the dialogs word by word or segment by segment
- Practice pronouncing dialogs word by word or segment by segment, using the included microphone
- Apply vocabulary by filling in new words from the dialogs, or in other gamelike activities, such as crossword puzzles
Transparent language successfully uses this model in its other language packages. Its Japanese adaptation is equally successful, with two main differences: Japanese needs better-integrated politeness and gender-specific language practice, and at this level it should print dialogs in kana instead of roomaji. (The separate practice module for the kana is a bit of an afterthought, so pick up a separate kana review, too.) Overall, this is a unique system that will both entertain and challenge you. Each sentence is given with a full translation, and each word with grammatical details, such as tense, etc. You can slow down videos and recorded speech to hear them better, and you can play back your own pronunciation to compare it with native speakers'. This is painful, we know, but helpful. Note that you should know at least some Japanese first and be fairly comfortable with concepts like -masu forms and "object particle." Also, the software gives pronunciation feedback with gimmicky graphs that will make sense only if you've studied acoustic phonetics before; nonetheless, the interactive pronunciation and the videos are the most useful features. Caveats: the software works with both Mac OS and Windows, but some extra stuff on the Bonus CD works only with Windows. (This should not at all dissuade Mac users, however.) Also remember that it's rather antisocial to practice conversation only on the computer, so here's a great excuse to sit at the sushi bar. --Erik Macki
Amazon.com Product Description
With JapaneseNow!, you'll learn by immersing yourself in Japanese. You'll participate in real conversations, read interesting articles, and watch intriguing videos from Japan. To simplify the new learner's task, JapaneseNow! uses a writing system called romaji, which presents Japanese words using the same alphabet as English. Japanese is normally written using two complete alphabets (kana) plus thousands of special characters (kanji). Romaji represents the sounds of Japanese in a way that is more recognizable to English speakers.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Good primer, but you'll need more. April 12, 2002
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I work for a Japanese company, and I bought this program after a trip to Japan. (I knew I would be going back again, occasionally.) It's slow learning the language with any method. Japanese is quite different than English. But, I was able to get some basic phrases in a short time.This product probably won't stand on it's own, since the program doesn't directly teach you the grammar. You kind of have to stumble into that in the program, or figure it out on your own. Also, I haven't seen a dictionary or well indexed topics in the program to help you learn specific words quickly... that would have been nice. The good news is this program does help you get a handle on pronuciation and inflection very quickly. (When I met my Japanese colleagues again later on, they were impressed with my pronunciation - what little I could say.) Click on a word, and it pronounces the word. Click on another icon, it pronounces it slower. Click on yet a different icon, and it'll read the whole sentence. Very cool! Of course, I'm now looking for more advanced books. I've got some friends at work that help me learn at lunchtime, now. Pretty good deal... I buy them lunch, they help me learn Japanese. ;) I used this software on a Macintosh G3/350. Hope this helps!
 Don't waste your money January 26, 2002
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
This program has the worst user interface I've ever seen in my life, and plenty of bugs to go with it.The video conversations are a great idea but they are poorly executed and there are too few of them anyway. The rest of the program vaguely resembles a reference guide but it's to cumbersome to be of much practical use.
Awful product. December 8, 2001
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
If you speak absolutely no Japanese, this product is not for you. If you speak a little bit of Japanese you would hate this program. This is a horrible way to teach yourself the language and probably wouldn`t help beginners at all. DO NOT BUY!!!!
Terrible Program - There has to be something better September 23, 2001
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I bought this CD before my husband and I got stationed in Japan, and thought it would help me to get a little bit of a grasp on the language. It is terrible. I want to be able to learn the language step by step, starting basic and working to intermediate, like you do with any language, but this is impossible. It throws you into the language somewhere in the middle and you have to have a handle on the language before you even begin to work with this program. It advertises that it is great for the beginner, but I think I just wasted my money.
 Good for supplimental use only! December 3, 2000
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
If you are a beginning student, this program can be used as a suppliment to other learning tools. This program will not teach you Japanese by itself! The good points are the video/dialog sections and the word record/playback feature (which I use alot to practice pronunciation). A major drawback is the lack of a good lookup tool to find a specific word in context within a sentence. You are also limited to the words used in each lesson for the interactive practice sections. If you are just curious, this is an affordable way to explore the Japanese language, but if you are a serious student you might consider "Power Japanese" (which I think is changing names to "Complete Japanese"). Konnichi wa!
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