Japanese Now! 8.0

by Transparent Language

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.8 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004NHLF
• Item model number: JE-R08-2-CD
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 15, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 1.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,962 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good for supplimental use only!, December 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Japanese Now! 8.0 (CD-ROM)

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!

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Do not buy this product!, October 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Japanese Now! 8.0 (CD-ROM)

This was the first program I installed on a new computer. After 5 minutes of running the program I got an error message and the program shut down. After trying repeatedly to fix the error, I contacted the tech dept and they sent me SIX page e-mail with over 40 steps in the instructions to fix the program. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT! As the other reviews noted, it's not really for beginners, you should have a basic knowledge of the Japanese language.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible Program - There has to be something better, September 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Japanese Now! 8.0 (CD-ROM)

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.