For any American studying foreign languages, Japanese and other Asian dialects can present a real challenge. Now as a student of languages, I think Pimsleur Japanese courses present a very good option for the student wanting to learn practical Japanese communication skills. But first, let's look at a few facts about the Japanese language and why its very appealing to learn.

Japanese is spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese expatriate communities around the world. As the second largest economy in the world, the business advantages to learning Japanese should be quite obvious. In addition, the rich cultural and historical background of Japanese is truly impressive.

One of the difficulties experienced by American students of Japanese lies in the fact that it is an agglutinative language and also reflects the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and vocabulary indicating the relative status of speaker, listener and the person mentioned in conversation. On the written side, Japanese is written with via three different script types: kanji which consists of Chinese characters, and two syllabic forms, known as hiragana and katakana. Another form, Romani which uses the Latin alphabet, is also used in modern Japanese, especially in business circles and advertising.

Now the difficulties of Japanese writing system are not addressed in the Pimsleur Japanese courses offered. For most students of Japanese, this will not present a problem since the goal is practical everyday conversation and this is where Pimsleur excels. The Pimsleur language learning system is a language acquisition method designed by Dr. Paul Pimsleur. In short the method works almost entirely through listening. The lessons are 30 minutes long so they are very digestible for even the busiest person.

As someone who has used Pimsleur for several languages, as a rule of thumb you should attain a minimum of 70 percent comprehension, at which point you can move on to the next lesson. As the lessons repeat themselves and add new material, it is not necessary for you to master each lesson perfectly before moving on. So if your thinking about studying Japanese try Pimsleur Japanese.