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Last night, at around 12:30 midnight, I was awakened by a loud noise, the exact nature of which I don't remember... except that it was followed by a dozen car alarms going off.

I still don't know what it was.

Let's Learn Japanese!

Once again, know99 in Phoenix is airing Let's Learn Japanese, the show that turned me into a language geek.

Starting today, it airs four lessons in a row every Wednesday. They air from 10:00am to noon, and again from 4:00pm to 6:00pm. It's a college-level course, equivalent to JPN 101/102 if you have the textbooks. That said, some of the skits in the show can be a bit Sesame Streetish, especially in these first few lessons where all we've learned yet is "X is Y" and "This is an X." But it gets much better as time progresses, and to tell the truth, the goofier a skit is, the better you'll remember the material. You get to see a lot of what Japan is like, or was like in 1983. I'll be making posts about it later.

I'm going to try and get all the episodes on tape. And this time, I really mean it. Some weird force has foiled my plans each time so far. But hopefully I'll at least get the first four lessons on tape today, and I can make copies for those of you who want them and can't get to the VCR in time.

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BTW, if you're a language geek like me, and want to learn a language as it's spoken rather than it's written, then television courses are really the way to go. Some of them may be airing regularly on a channel you already receive, like know99, MCTV the Annenberg/CPB channel, or your local PBS affiliate. Also, if you have broadband, you can view some series on-demand from anywhere in the world, through the Annenberg/CPB website.

Of these, my favorite is French in Action: This is probably the best way to learn French without growing up in Paris.
It is designed on the principle of immersion: conduct the course entirely in French, but make it easy for students to figure things out by context. But the real genius of it is how it makes even the beginner lessons interesting.

The first handful of lessons take place in a classroom setting where they set up the story that will take up the rest of the lesson, and the teacher matches wits with a smart-assed student who already speaks French. The rest of the series is a light-hearted story about a young American man who comes to Paris on walkabout, and meets a young Parisian woman, and they go have adventures while this creepy Man In Black follows them around. Most of these episodes are 15 minutes long, with an additional 15 minutes where Pierre Capretz clarifies some aspects of the language used, with the help of various movie and television clips, cartoons, mini-skits, and photographs.

Also, the textbook is still widely available, and it provides a grand feast of additional reading material, including everything from comics to classic poetry to famous quotes.

I've only watched half of the lessons myself, and read maybe a third of the textbook, but I found I could converse rather comfortably in French when I visited Paris and Strasbourg last year. In contrast, I took four years of Spanish in high school, and at the end of it, I could conjugate the hell out of an irregular verb, but I had no fluency. If I ever had to speak any Spanish, I'd freeze up, and run endless grammar checks in my head. You'd think in this town, I'd have ample opportunity to practice, but I'm too shy for that. With a TV course, one can see the language in use, and trust that anyone else could use it the same way. And, alone in my room, I could repeat stuff in front of my TV until I was blue in the face, and feel no embarrassment.

I could sing its praises for hours, but I suggest you see for yourself; the entire series is available for online viewing if you register with the Annenberg/CPB channel.