Something to help with sounds

[paste]

Hi,

I find that the hardest thing to do when learning a new language is to get used to the new sounds that come along with it. Because of this, I want something that will really help me assimilate the auditory portion of Japanese. I'm taking a Japanese class at my college, but that's only 4 hours a week, and it's not entirely in Japanese, either. What would you recommend as far as good audio to listen to? Anything that I could use in the car as well would be great, too.

Paste

[Ben Nielson]

TBS Radio podcasts.

http://www.tbsradio.jp/

Keep them on as much as you possibly can. Even if you don't understand it, it'll just get you used to the sounds of Japanese.

You can download them via Itunes by, obviously, following the ITunes images.

If you don't have ITunes, you can instead download them via the RSS feed. Just click the RSS image, then look for the .mp3 files.

[clay]

While the selection isn't large (yet), we do have a growing Audio section. Almost all of the ebooks or lessons have MP3s to download for use with your iPod or to burn to a CD.

[Ben Nielson]

I'd also just like to throw in a quick suggestion...

Not sure what level your Japanese is at, but even though it seems like you might not understand much/anything I do think it's a good idea to listen to audio intended for a Japanese audience sometimes. Mix it in with audio from your lessons, I suppose, but the sooner you're listening to Japanese spoken at normal-speaking speed, the quicker your ear will adapt to it.

At least, so I've found. My Japanese took a huge step up when I bit the bullet and dove into the world of Japanese intended for the Japanese viewer. At first, it's daunting but when you go back to your original learning materials you realize how strange they usually sound and how incredibly easy they are to understand.

[Yudan Taiteki]

Ideally your learning material audio should be at normal speed too. That's one of the things I like about Japanese: The Spoken Language; all the audio materials are at natural speed from the beginning.

[paste]

alright, thanks everyone. very helpful ;]

-paste