Say the name “Yan-san” to any­one who’s stud­ied Japan­ese in the last thir­ty years, and you’ll prob­a­bly get a reac­tion of delight­ed recog­ni­tion. It means that, inside or out­side the class­room, they stud­ied with Let’s Learn Japan­ese, a series of edu­ca­tion­al videos pro­duced by the Japan Foun­da­tion. The first “sea­son,” if you like, came out in 1984, the time of an enor­mous Asian eco­nom­ic bub­ble that made the world’s future look Japan­ese, send­ing the lan­guage straight to the top of every inter­na­tion­al busi­ness-mind­ed stu­den­t’s to-do-list. (Sound famil­iar, cur­rent strug­glers with Man­darin?) Its hero, a young man of delib­er­ate­ly ambigu­ous nation­al­i­ty named Yan — the Japan­ese all address him with the every­day hon­orif­ic -san — turns up in Japan for a few years of life in Tokyo and works at an archi­tec­ture firm, helped along by his host fam­i­ly the Katos, his eager­ly team-play­ing co-work­ers (one of whom intro­duces him­self, in Eng­lish, with the phase, “We are friends — okay?”), and a vari­ety of help­ful cit­i­zens and pro­fes­sion­als all across the Land of the Ris­ing Sun.

This may sound like dull stuff — the stuff of run-of-the-mill lan­guage-learn­ing videos — but Let’s Learn Japan­ese raised the bar for this sort of thing, in terms of not just pro­duc­tion val­ue and teach­ing effec­tive­ness but sheer rewatch­a­bil­i­ty. In addi­tion to Yan-san’s life among the Japan­ese peo­ple, Let’s Learn Japan­ese also offers instruc­tion­al seg­ments led by Mary Althaus, still a pro­fes­sor at Toky­o’s Tsu­da Col­lege, and imag­i­na­tive illus­tra­tive skits per­formed by the inde­fati­ga­ble trio of Mine, Kai­hō, and Sug­i­hara. In the more advanced Sea­son 2, released over a decade lat­er in 1995, they’ve become the eeri­ly sim­i­lar Kodama, Andō, and Koy­ana­gi, and Yan-san has become a grad­u­ate stu­dent with girl­friend trou­bles. Hav­ing watched all 52 episodes sev­er­al times through, I can vouch for both its enter­tain­ment val­ue and its effec­tive­ness. (It also spurred me to start vol­un­teer­ing at the Japan Foun­da­tion, Los Ange­les.) So can the for­eign­ers who give a hero’s wel­come to star Nick Muhrin (who, last I heard, still lives in Japan) when they run into him. I know I’ve learned enough to buy Yan-san a drink.

You can find more use­ful Japan­ese-learn­ing mate­ri­als to sup­ple­ment all this in our archive of free lan­guage lessons. It includes resources rang­ing from the For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute’s dig­i­tized text­books and tapes to pod­casts like the life abroad-ori­ent­ed Japanesepod101 [iTunes Free — Feed] and the ani­me-geared Japan­cast [iTunes Free — Feed]. 皆さんがんばって！

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Learn Japan­ese Free

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

I spent this after­noon chat­ting with a trav­el writer about how we first allowed our­selves to start learn­ing for­eign lan­guages. That notion may sound a bit odd, espe­cial­ly to those of you liv­ing in coun­tries where every­one grows up trilin­gual. But Amer­i­cans — even Amer­i­can trav­el­ers — have strug­gled with the con­cept of mas­ter­ing lan­guages oth­er than Eng­lish. Some­times it has seemed mere­ly unnec­es­sary; at oth­er times, down­right impos­si­ble. But no mat­ter our nation­al­i­ty, our increas­ing­ly glob­al­ized 21st-cen­tu­ry lives have put to rest any and all excus­es in which we might dress up our lin­guis­tic parochial­ism. Tech­nol­o­gy has also done more than its share, giv­en the ever-grow­ing abun­dance of free and effec­tive lan­guage-learn­ing resources on the inter­net. Take for exam­ple, our pret­ty mas­sive list of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons. Or dis­cov­er this trove of lan­guage learn­ing resources from the U.S. For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute, a gov­ern­ment agency long tasked with teach­ing the widest pos­si­ble vari­ety of tongues to diplo­mats and oth­er offi­cials sta­tioned abroad. Though pro­duced sev­er­al decades ago, the lessons are still rel­e­vant .… and, more impor­tant­ly, they’re in the pub­lic domain.

Most of the down­load­ables avail­able for each of the over 40 lan­guages on the site include include text lessons in PDF form and audio lessons, suit­able for load­ing onto your mobile audio device of choice, in MP3 form. Nat­u­ral­ly, you’ll find a more robust store of FSI resources for the much-spo­ken Chi­nese, Span­ish, and French than you will for, say, Chinyan­ja, Lin­gala, and Sin­hala — but how often do you run across means of learn­ing that lat­ter class of lan­guages at all? I’ve found Japan­ese and Kore­an, my own East Asian lan­guages of choice, decent­ly rep­re­sent­ed; in fact, prepa­ra­tion for an extend­ed trip to South Korea this week has seen me go into study­ing over­drive, mak­ing use of every online resource avail­able. You can find more of them in our full list of free lan­guage lessons, where, if you’d like to learn any of the lan­guages men­tioned here — or maybe Ara­bic, Finnish, Swahili, or many tongues besides — you can get a pain­less start. We live in too big (and too inter­est­ing) a world not to take advan­tage of it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 47 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

For only $269, you can learn to speak Klin­gon with Roset­ta Stone.

Our big col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons offers tuto­ri­als in Bam­bara, Bul­gar­i­an, Ice­landic, Yid­dish and more. But Klin­gon? That, sad­ly, you can only get at Roset­ta Stone. Their soft­ware is com­pat­i­ble with Win­dows XP+ and OS X+, requires a CD-Rom dri­ve and a head­set with a micro­phone, and it lets you have live con­ver­sa­tion ses­sions with native speak­ers. By the time you’re done, you should be able to make small talk in Klin­gon — order food at a restau­rant, make a hotel reser­va­tion, ask for direc­tions. You know, the basics.

Are you ready to play The Great Lan­guage Game? This online game “chal­lenges you to dis­tin­guish between some eighty or so lan­guages [see a list here] based on their sound alone. In each game you’re allowed three mis­takes, which are kept for you to study at the end. If you’re feel­ing com­pet­i­tive, share your score with some friends and com­pete for some seri­ous brag­ging rights.” You can even see how oth­er play­ers are far­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly.

If you rock the game, let us know in the com­ments below.

If you come out of the game feel­ing like you could brush up on your  lan­guages (which you pret­ty well might), then head over to our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons. It offers free lessons in 46 lan­guages, every­thing from Ara­bic to Yid­dish. Have fun.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 46 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

“Learn Eng­lish With Ricky Ger­vais,” A New Pod­cast Debuts (NSFW)