I've been learning Japanese in university for the past year, the pronouncations arent that difficult, they dont pronounce "su" slowly the way an English speaker would, its almost like an "s" sound. "suki", meaning like, is said so fast it comes out as "ski" sometimes, but usually Japanese people slow down their pronouncation for those who dont speak the language very well.

Its brilliant how much katakana butchers the English (or any! not just English) language but is so useful and simple to use

Quote Originally Posted by JKTrix
The best way to learn Japanese is through Immersion. After all, that's the way people learn their native languages--you grow up around people who speak the language and you eventually pick things up. Since most of us don't live in Japan, all we can do is take lessons. But to help in the 'immersion', and to get a good feel of how Japanese people really speak, we have the internet. Get Japanese music, watch anime, and pay attention to the words they are speaking. Chances are you won't understand it for a while, but you'll pick some things up and most importantly you're familiarizing yourself with how Japanese people speak
Have to agree with this. Listening to an audio CD doesnt cut it you need face to face human teaching and eventually conversation. You need to be able to think on the spot when learning any language. My Japanese teacher, who is actually Japanese, helped me out a lot with that, apparently my Japanese was more understandable than my English because of my thick irish accent.

In saying that, I learnt to read the language through online games (ff11) by playing with japanese players.