Pimsleur Japanese – It became affordable??? – [2021]

For people who prefer the CD’S over an app:
Pimsleur Japanese Level 1

Pimsleur Japanese

Now that the price is better, I can finally recommend this fully. The Pimsleur language courses are by far the best audio courses which I have found so far. IF you can implement them in your daily routine, this really will become the quickest way for you to learn your target language. The lessons are nicely structured and there is a lot of reviewing as well to keep you from forgetting anything which you’ve learned before.

I said ‘if’ in caps a moment ago as these courses are mainly for beginner level and as an intermediate learner, it’s kind of difficult to find from which audio lesson you should begin. It really is slightly complicated as a not beginner as they start off with basics and every now and then add something complicated for vocab or grammar. You may also have a different way of saying certain things in Japanese depending on your skill level which the audio lesson may have it’s own way of saying those things.

Why audio courses good

They allow you to hear native speakers talk, the more different people you hear, the easier it will be to actually understand when people talk to you. A lot of people talk quite clearly in these courses, but you probably know that people in the “real” world don’t always talk very clearly or talk with an accent. It’s a good way of also checking if your own pronunciation is correct or not.

I personally like doing Pimsleur whilst doing house work like cleaning the dishes, or when using the vacuum cleaner (I wear headphones as I can’t stand the sound of vacuum cleaners). I tried using them in the car when going to work when I was still living in Belgium, but your focus goes everywhere when driving so I would really not advise this

Other resources

There are some other resources here and audio only lessons are getting slightly outdated as more and more people can not stay focused enough to do these audio lessons without getting distracted. I would still recommend Pimsleur Japanese if you actually feel like audio lessons would benefit you, but there is also Japanese pod 101 if you want audio lessons. Jpod 101 has audio lessons but in a more loose and entertaining way whilst Pimsleur really focuses on the learning and reviewing part without any of the shit chat that Jpod 101 has.