Description:
It is a credit to Fairfield Language Technologies that its Japanese Explorer is one of the best examples of language-learning software--period. If you are used to the old-fashioned but lamentably persistent grammar-translation method of learning languages, Japanese Explorer may surprise you because it involves no overt instruction in grammar or lists of vocabulary with English translations. Instead, it relies on very clever contextualization of Japanese words and structures with photographs so that you never realize you're learning grammar. We literally found ourselves speaking and understanding quite a bit of basic Japanese in about an hour. Each graduated lesson works like this: First, you learn a new word by seeing a picture of, say, a man. You then read the Japanese word for "man" (at different points, both in Roman letters and in Japanese script) and hear it spoken. After learning a whole set of words this way, you move into self-quizzing mode, where you see just a picture of a man and you have to choose the right word, either from spoken or written cues. This emphasis on listening comprehension is fantastic and is one of the components that sets the software apart, but there are also reading and writing exercises. So how do they cover grammar? Japanese has a complicated system of counters attached to numbers. Eventually, for instance, you'll see hitotsu under a picture of one man and futatsu under a picture of two men. Later you'll see hippiki under one fish and nihiki under two fish. If you are a grammar guru, you might be able to figure out that humans are counted with hitotsu-futatsu, and small animals are counted with hippiki-nihiki. However, the beauty is you don't have to be a grammar guru at all because the software doesn't expect you to state rules like that; it expects you only to associate a picture of two fish with nihiki instead of futatsu. Eventually, you get into longer phrases that cover verbs, adjectives, and prepositional phrases. It's amazingly effortless, especially so for children as young as 6. Caveats: The CD-ROM includes both Mac OS and Windows versions. Your installation will include the first-level lessons of a couple dozen other languages for free, too, so you have to know that the Japanese word for "Japanese" is Nihongo in order to select it from the list. Also, remember that software is no replacement for Japanese-speaking people, so take what you learn and use it in the world! --Erik Macki
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