The main focus of the site is on the use of Absolute Pimsleur’s Japanese I to help us learn Japanese. It’s not the only thing you should be using, which is why I post regular vocabulary lists and other such resources, but Pimsleur’s is one of the best starting spots for anyone new to Japanese. For a more in depth analysis and links to other useful texts, dictionaries, flash cards and so on, check out my resource list post by clicking here.
Below you will find links to the individual lesson transcripts for Absolute Pimsleur’s Japanese I.
Lessons – 01 – 02 – 03 – 04 – 05
Lessons – 06 – 07 – 08 – 09 – 10
Lessons – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15
Lessons – 16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20
Lessons – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25
Lessons – 26 – 27 – 28 – 29 – 30
You sir, are a gentleman & a scholar. I just started Pimsleur Japanese I two days ago & was bemoaning the lack of a transcript so I could put extra work on those few vocabulary words that always have difficulty sticking in my memory.
Your hiragana-based transcrips + Anki flashcard program = STUDY BLISS!
Thanks a million. I look forward to tracking our mutual progress through the Pimsleur Japanese I program!
Glad you’re finding my transcripts useful. What’s the Anki flashcard program? Is it for kana or is it kanji based? I use Java Kanji Flashcards 500 for my first 500 kanji. It’s just a free java based online program, but combined with my homemade flashcards, it gets the job done for me when it comes to kanji. Here’s a link if you or anyone else is interested in seeing it.
http://nuthatch.com/java/kanjicards/
Anki is a flashcard program that is based on spaced repetition method of learning. Basically, this is a method by which phrases & terms can be learned (read: moved into long-term memory) more efficiently by controlling how often one encounters flashcards that are rated based on how difficult they are to recognize/interpret/translate. The link for this freeware program is http://ichi2.net/anki/ however, there are other programs like this out there that work along similar principles. Lots of folks use this program to help them with kanji, although many use it as a tool for sentence recognition as well.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by kana or kanji based, all I know is that you can cut/paste both kana & kanji into the program, with one cool feature being that the program automatically recognizes pasted kanji and outputs possible readings in kana form. I do know that the default for entering flashcard information is the standard alphabet used in English, but there may be a feature that allows you to type kana or kanji directly into the program. I haven’t have too much time to fool around with the many features though.
Hi! Thank you for the transcripts, it’s very useful, though I found a mistake: in Lesson 1 you mix ひらがな and かたかな in one word (アメリカじん), but it’s not allowed, and not correct. You should write it with full かたかな (アメリカジン in that case).
Thanks again and keep up with the good work! (‘Cause I learn about simultaneously with you 😎
Nice catch Peti. The way the language bar works in XP for me is I have to manually switch it from katakana to hiragana and back if I want to use either of them. Same if I want to add any English. So I usually just write everything in one, say hiragana first, and then go back and fill in the katakana parts. It makes it hard to catch things like this when I just go around copy and pasting the katakana into the sentences. I’ll fix that as soon as possible. More than likely it or others like it are wrong, so I’ll do a quick scan of the other lessons to be safe.
Anyone else that comes across something they think is wrong, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. I’m not perfect and this is all self taught, so I’m bound to make mistakes, especially in regards to little things like Peti pointed out.
Hey, there is a way to change between ひらがな and カタカナ quickly if your using romaji input. I set mine to ひらがな and then when a カタカナ type word comes up i just type it in ひらがな then (while the dotted lines are still under the text) i just hit the enter/return button on my keyboard.
Also doing this multiple times can be used to change words to かんじ and back to ひらがな quickly if you do it by mistake etc.
Hope this helps someone, oh yeah and this is a great blog Kirby thank you sooooo much im only on lesson 7 so im lucky i came across this before do like the whole of Pimsleur’s Japanese I
Oops! i forgot to ask… how do i contact you directly???
すごいがくせい, thanks for the kind words, glad you like the blog. Also, I know about the hitting space and enter to get it to change between kanji, hiragana and katakana, but I’d have to stop and hit enter after every word and make sure it doesn’t change them to the various kanji on me.
Sometimes I just leave it hiragana mode and type everything except katakana words, then go back and do the space / enter trick to get turn it into the kana version, but this ends up slower than just mass copy and pasting beer or dollar into the transcripts. I’m sure I’m probably doing something wrong on my end though, as I’ve never used the language bar on the computer to type in other languages before.
The best way to contact me would be through the comments if it’s related to any of the posts I make. Otherwise, you could reach me by email at kirbymorph@gmail.com.
Try JWPce! It’s a free japanese text editor and dictionary. It has a lot of useful functions and you can easily solve these small problems with it.
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html
アメリカじん is correct, since only America is a foreign word and not (じん) which is a japanese word.
But in this case America is only a stem of another word, a part of a whole.
I google them:
アメリカじん: 2.030.000 hits
アメリカジン: 1.860.000 hits
The difference is small, although.
I read this rule in a book written in Hungarian in the 70’s (maybe obsolete?) so I cannot cite it directly.