Starting to study Japaneese... textbook suggestions?
 

Well I am assuming somewhere on this board someone exists who is studying Japaneese. I searched and suprisingly there are not threads on this, thus I figured to start one.

I want to start to learn. I'd be learning from scratch. I know absolutley NOTHING about Japaneese... I am basically looking for textbook series/suggestions, so I don't have to sort through all the mumbo-jumbo they sell all over the place.

Any tips from people who have studied? Which texts worked for you, and which do you suggest?

HAI!:1zhelp:

Thisis an excellent textbook if you already know hiragana, and to some extent katakana. It teaches you the basic grammar, daily life conversations, and it's a great way to start with kanji learning. We use it at my school, and I haven't heard anyone complain about it.

I remember I would mail my Japanese for Busy People textbooks to this one person, but since the crash, I guess I lost contact, I still have Japanese for Busy People I and the accompanying textbook if anyone wants it.

Konnichiwa, watashi wa mou Nihongo o benkyou shiteru. :)
Whew, I'm glad I have company here. That means I could practice my japanese things or two.

If you want to study japanese, you must sufficient at readin' hiragana first. It's very crucial. It's okay if you cant memorize all katakana, but hiragana is a must! because you are virtually blind person if studying japanese without knowing hiragana.

Hope this thread will become more lively as the time being.

I started learning on Japanese for Busy People, and I think it is a good series to start learning basic Japanese on(like katakana and hiragana, as well as grammar concepts). However, it is mostly oriented towards people who intend to learn Japanese for business applications.

I then moved on to the Yookoso! series after this first year, which I feel did a very good job of presenting all aspects of Japanese language gradually at the same time, and at a good pace.

If you want to learn conversational Japanese, I would suggest get Yookoso!.
I still have the 2nd edition of the second book in the series, with practice CDs as well.

listen to pimsleurs while you go to sleep. err... don't recite it or else you'll never sleep :P.

If you need Pimsleur's, I have the whole thing (all 90 lessons) in ogg format that I can upload to an FTP. And, I'd suggest not listening to it in your sleep, so you can recite it; reciting it helps you learn to speak and not just listen, and aids in both.

I would love to have you upload those files, OnlyJedi.
How large is that collection though?

Around 300MB I think, maybe 400MB. I have it at home on my desktop, never got around to putting it on my laptop, so I'll know for sure when I get home. Do you have a preffered method of transfer? I'd prefer sending it to someone's FTP, since that way we can share the joy.

You say you know nothing. I very, VERY strongly reccomend that you do some reseach before you start putting the money down to study. Learning Japanese entails a lot, being so different from English (which I'm assuming is your native language).

Do you want to learn enough to make you way around as a tourist? Do you not care about the written aspect of the language? Are you aiming for complete fluency?

I wouldn't reccomend Japanese for Busy People for a person who's aiming for fluency; it wasn't made for that. Get an idea of what your capibilities and what you'd like to accomplish, then make your game plan.

I'm currently using the GENKI series of textbooks as you can see:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...176/Genki3.jpg

I find the approach they use isn't quite as direct as the Interactive Japanese, published at my local university but it's quite informative and gives you more background into how and why a particular grammatical structure is used. It's aimed at somewhat higher level of English readers though, surprisingly. One note I have is I find that they introduce kanji a bit too quickly, but most of the kanji is accompanied by furigana. If you keep at it everyday and do the exercises concluding each chapter, then I think some decent progress can be made if you do self studying. BTW, would anyone know what the approximate JLPT Kyuu level the first and second textbooks are aimed at?

EDIT: Sorry for stretching the tables as I'm using a work computer and it doesn't have an image resizing program. Gomen nee. ;_;

kanji... furigana... hiragana.. what is all this stuff? is it sort of like pinyin for chinese? oh well, i will wiki it.

before you buy anything, learn how to read Katakana and Hiragana FIRST. If you can handle those two alphabets you'll be ready to move on to actually studying the language. That, and it helps a ton while learning, and it's how they teach you in school, along with basic basic conversational japanese.

There's plenty of cheap books you can buy that will help you learn those two alphabets too, it'd probobly be best you did get one of these since the stroke order is extrodinarily important to the japanese.

As far as actually learning japanese in a constroctive manner, I HIGHLY RECOMEND taking a class, learning on your own is very tough.

And like all the others said, DO SOME RESEARCH on the language first online, it looks like you don't even know the extreme basics.

I did some more research and it seems they use GENKI at my school as well... as it seems this company appears to be one of the dominating learning tools for Japaneese. I will look more into these series...

:tpg:

Yes, regarding the kana - the two alphabets - hiragana and kata, I'd advise you to follow this method to learn it ASAP. Don't spend two months like how I did just to rewrite the stupid A I U E O table 500 times.

Here's how you do it (or I did it, and got it down pact within 3-4 days instead of taking forever):
For Hiragana
1) Right down the "A" hiragana 10 times in a row, and get a good book or online that shows you the proper stroke order. VERY IMPORTANT! Also make sure you pronounce these correctly. This should be pronounced as "AHHH" like when you go to the doctor.

2) Move on to "E" kana and do the same. Sorry as I'm using my work computer and cannot use Japanese font.

3) Continue this until you get to the "O". Now close the books and test yourself. Testing yourself is the best way to memorize, as while it took me about 3-4 days with hiragana, kata was picked up much faster - within a day, since many of them do look similar to hiragana.

4) Once you've got yourself from a i u e o to ka ki ku ke ko and all the way down, start writing it in tables and if you can do that, then that's great.

5) Use flash cards. You can make this yourself with cutting up paper. Write the kana on one side and the romaji (English expression) on the other. Put them in a hat and draw them up and recite what you have. If you picked up a "U", then write the kana for it.

6) That's pretty much the basics. But to get the alphabet down as well, start writing simple words, like konnichiwa etc. You should already by now note how to use Ko - n- ni - chi - wa, those 5 kana's to come up with the word.

I use Genki also. They seem fine to me. My recommendation though is to NOT try and learn japanese unless you plan to take it in college also. You wont have the motivation to really learn it otherwise. It's very difficult and frustrating, but also fun and rewarding ;)

Also, Pimsleur's Japanese is no good for really learning the language. It teaches nothing but memorizing short phrases (yes i've listened to it). Hiragana and Katakana are a bitch. I had to learn them both in 2 weeks and i've never been so stressed before. Don't worry though because after about 4 months you can write and read them without thinking too much.

http://tsunamichan.phpwebhosting.com...ese/index.html

This is a flash-card stlye game that teaches you Hiragana. It's also kind of like strip-poker, because the more you get right, the less clothing the "teacher" wears :p

This actually helped me alot when I was learning Hiragana. There is also a Katakana version, but I don't think it's finished...

If you can, take a class, you'll learn twice as fast as you would on your own...

I accidently kinda started using romaji first and it wasn't good.

Like everyone else has said, make sure you use Hirigana and Katakana from the start because that'll start you off on a better foot with learning Japanese.

That's actually a pretty good test since it gives you good statistics of which kana you're good at and which one's you recognize quickly. Good find.

I struggled with kana with a while, but I downloaded this program (see attachment) in like the eighth grade and never had trouble with 'em again. Do this a few minutes a day, write 'em in your spare time.

The extra "push" of a structured class cannot be overestimated. If you can find a class to attend, then by all means, do so.

and I'll be the first to say learn Katakana first.

If you can read katakana quickly without having to think about it, and can piece together the word it's supposed to represent, you already have access to a LOT of words. They're usually English words represented in Japanese. Compared to, oh, reading a script which you don't know the meaning of.

I'm not sure if this is any help to you, but in my Japanese class, we use "きもの" (Kimono). It's essentially a grade 3 textbook in Japan.

I used Genki at the lower division classes at university as well and I'd suggest it. The two books covers a wide variety of grammar points and their practice exercises are nicely put together. I also like how they way they arrange the grammar points in the chapters.

My only criticism was that I wasn't too hot on how they integrated kanji and arranged vocabulary in the book. The kanji seems just thrown into the back of the book and you just deal with it yourself. Also the vocabulary were also really sporadic, you'd learn the word for high in one chapter, then low in another.

Otherwise it's a decent book. If you want to start with something ridiculously simple, try Adventures in Japanese. They use them in high school and is relatively easy to follow, although they do a job of confusing you with dictionary terms and -masu form. Their first couple chapters on hiragana and katakana I remember were really effective so if Genki's introduction to these terms (only spanning 2 chapters), then you can try picking up the first book of AIJ.

Let me be the first to tell you that it is spelt Japanese, not Japaneese.

I agree with Kat on this one, as well as starting out using the verbs in the informal jisho form (~u and ~ru form). The first text books I used (Interactive Japanese) started with the ~masu form which made things much easier to follow. The Jisho form didn't come onto stage until the 2nd book. I'm not too sure why the authors "split" the Genki text into two parts. The first bit (chapters 1-12, I think) cover "Mary", a fictional exchange student, and her adventures in Japan using everyday life examples as primary study material and the vocabulary revolves around that. The second part seems more like grammar explanations and kanji stroke order and the like.

All in all, I think Genki is a good series, but now on reflection it's not very newb friendly, especially the explanation of the verb system and changing from masu to u and ru form (Genki does this backwards starting with the u/ru form going to masu). This series should perhaps be picked up at a later time, perhaps 6 months after you've got a more elementary textbook as suggested above.

FTW :tpg:

Uh no, learning -masu form right out of the gate is the dumbest teaching method I can think of. It'll totally fuck up your base knowledge of verb conjugation, in the future you'll have to re-learn everything just to know how to properly conjugate other forms. -Masu form is just one of those many forms, in fact it's barely used at all in normal day to day speech and it'd be stupid to put priority of learning that over dictionary form. Basically if you first learn -masu form, it's just memorization without knowing why it's conjugated the way it is. It becomes double the work and 3 steps back.

I agree because i suffered with the same problem. Genki taught me to think the masu form was the only form at first. I didn't even realize what the dictionary form was used for until much later chapters (can't remember which). Basically it set me back because i got used to ignoring the dictionary form.

I'm not sure if you have Genki confused with another book but the book does not actually teach it that way. Dictionary forms and masu forms are introduced in the same chapter (#3) but they teach you the differences, (there's even a chart listing out dictionary form, present test affirmative, present tense negative, stems, bases etc.) and how to conjugate RU verbs and U verbs into -masu. Also in the vocab lists, all the verbs are listed under their dictionary forms and -te form is introduced right in the Chap. 6 so I don't see how you could ignore them, for long anyways.

I have :jap1901: next semester as one of my uni classes so maybe this thread will be of help then ~~

No its genki... i've only looked at it a million times...lol. All i can tell you is short form isn't formally introduced until about half way through the first book, hence i never used it at ALL before then. I straight up memorized the te forms without understanding where they came from. I know its mentioned but sence it was never used in homework for a long time, i had trouble memorizing them all when the time came. No biggy but yeah, it was probably more of my teacher's fault then the book's. Actually now i think about it maybe i was just stupid ;)

I made a similair thread before the "Great Crash". You should check it out for further information. (And yes, my name was "-Dark Warp-" Back then).

We used Minna no Nihongo,
I Find them very good, but you again need to know both Hiragana and Katakana (it does have an explanation and stuff but it's only a few pages)
The thing i like about it is that it comes in 2 books, the Japanese exercisy book and then the translation and grammar notes, which explain everything. I would assume this is not uncommon in language textbooks though.
I have heard that the Kanji learning book for Minna no Nihongo isn't very good (we don't use that, we use Basic Kanji Book vols 1 and 2) But the reading exercise supplement is very good, i've found that very useful! I could scan in a few pages from the first lesson if you wanted to see th style, but i'm not back at university until tonight (GMT) but send me a PM or something and i'll see what i can do :)

We use Genki in my class, and I don't really have any complaints on it (except, as someone mentioned, the randomness of the vocabulary lists). Maybe part of this is because I was pretty familiar with Japanese when I started taking the class, and most of the stuff in the first book was review.

There was this one thing my teacher went over in class the other day, which I thought was funny. He's a native, and commented on how feminine a lot of the speech was in the examples (when it wasn't stated that "this is a female speech pattern). Three of the four authors are women, so I guess a lot female influence (intentionally or not), found its way into the book.

Yea, learning the writing system very first is probably a good idea, that way you have access to all materials, and not just the stuff in Romaji. I'm learning Arabic right now, and I'm focusing on getting good at the writing system before anything.

everyone, check out this link http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/
It has tons of free material of japanese language exercise. I'm overjoyed. I hope you could use it too for your own sake.;)

If you're looking to make a serious investment into learning the language, you may want to consider getting Elementary Japanese by Hasegawa. This is the book that they use here at Berkeley (I had to deal with it in a thick reader form before) and I definitely came out of my first year of Japanese here feeling like I learned a whole damn lot. It pretty much hits on the all the major topics any good first year college Japanese book should.

We've never used Genki here, so I'm always lost when talking to my friends from other colleges about Japanese. We do use Intermediate Japanese though.

I've always thought that they teach the -masu form before (usually) the plain form because they don't want you to go out into Japan and basically speak rudely to everyone there and make a problem out of yourself. Of course, if you're bold enough to go to a foreign country and speak in their language only after a year of training, then more power to you.

I started with the Interactive Japanese texts and it just seemed that they used ~masu as the base. At that time I wouldn't really know if it would be the most optimal or the least effective way to go around verbs. But since I've seen both ways now (masu to u/ru/irregulars) and vice versa, I guess I'm somewhat indifferent, but it seems the u/ru forms are where some of the other stems come from (~te/~tai desu). Perhaps when I move further into Genki I'll see the reasoning of starting with the u/ru form.

Okay, I'm learning Japanese at school...very slowly. I've learned all hiragana, barely any katakana and only about 20-30 kanji. What book (or series of books) do you recommend for me?

you know, I think we should make a thread to share our knowledges of japanese language to the forum. I also want to chat in japanese, but I'm just too afraid that I will speak in wrong grammar.

(sort of a bump, I guess)

Regarding the Genki series of books:

1) If I wanted the "complete" Genki I package what would I need? eg workbook, CD etc...
2) How many Genki series' are there?
3) Are there any sites besides amazon which sell these books? (and on that matter, ship internationally?)

From what I've read and heard, GENKI is one of the better texts.

Try to find torrents online so you can download stuff like rosetta stone or primswhatever.

Theres a lot of these torrents on Demonoid.com(some have external trackers). I found some Genki mp3's but it looks like some part of it is missing on another torrent that seems to be dead.

I'm sure there was a ~10 gig Learn Japanese collection on the Hongfire tracker, seems like its dead also.

Does anyone want to scan their text books? :dealer: :tpg:
(In advance...MOAR MOAR MOAR MOAR)

Bitme.org has a live torrent with 8 gigs of Japanese learning matieral. It's an invite-only site, though.

Well If you're in college, then I would personally suggest that you wait until you graduate. Once that's done, you could just join the JET program. From people I've talked to who've actually participated in the program stated that they didn't know a lick of japanese prior to when they first started the program.

I don't think any textbook would be the greatest tool in learning any language. Learning the written stuff is one thing, but there is nothing like getting spoken knowledge from people speak the language fluently.

Anyways, good luck with your search.

I sugguest you have a look at the Minna no Nihongo text books. I used them in class and find them good. The first volume comes in 2 books, the main one (pink colour) with all the exercises and the 2nd being the grammar book (yellow colour). You can get the pink one either kana or romaji - although I suggest kana; romaji is weak. There's also a CD, but it's expensive. Lucky I got a copy of it from a classmate.

Speaking of all this, I just got my pratice copy of the Kyuu 3/4 JLPT test today in the mail. I'll be putting that aside until a few months when I'm ready to test myself out.

Suggestions!
 

I have been studying nihongo myself since the summer of 2005, and I must tell you, you are in for a lot of work. I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you are truly serious.

Anyhow, I would recommend these relatively cheap and easily available books: this for learning the basic grammar, hiragana, etc., and this for the kanji. Neither are full-fledged textbooks, like Genki, but they served me pretty well, enough to be proficient in basic Japanese.

Actually, I found this thread Googling for a torrent of a real textbook.

~ erikku

I hear many suggestions for textbooks, but none for the most efficient. There is no substitute for learning a new language in the real environment or with real people. Study the grammar vocabulary online and get on a chat with someone, they are not that hard to find.

If you really want conversational dialogue, the best place to look is subtitled anime! They use colloquialisms and slang that you would be using in your elementary level, and you will get used to the conjugation naturally, instead of having to figure it out procedurally.

I wonder what support we would have for creating a couple threads in which members would speak exclusively in that language or it could be a sounding board for those learning members. There seem to be many Japanese scholars in this thread alone, so anyone interested?

I found this page by on Google randomly, and I made an acount just to say this. What I've quoted is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY FALSE.The way that Anime and Manga are phrased, NO ONE ACTUALLY TALKS LIKE THAT. They're written a certain way because of the style. There is a lot of things said you would never hear in real life.

Another vouch for Genki since that's what we're using right now, although the vocab introduces some counter-intuitive words like "host family" and "LL". I also wish they introduced short form earlier with its various applications, since -masu makes lots of things longwinded. However, overall it's a good book as long as you force yourself to learn each concept thoroughly.

Japanese textbooks suggestion
 

Hi,

I chose Japanese as my elected subject in uni, the textbooks we used are called Japanese for busy people volume 1 and 2 (ISBN 0-87011-599-5, 0-87011-919-2) published by Kodansha, and I think it is quite easy to use. Also the dictionary is essential, it is called Basic Japanese-English dictionary published by Bonjinsha Oxford (ISBN 0-19-864162-1). I hope it helps.


myeronetwo ;)

Nakama vol.1 and 2 is the best book to use because i used it in my college Japanese class and it works good

I took Japanese I and II in my Freshmen and Sophomore years of high school and the book we used was Ima 1 and Ima 2. I thought these books did a wonderful job explaining things and it wasn't hard to follow at all.

Found it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Ima-Level-1-Su...e=UTF8&s=books

It's kind of expensive but I think they are worth it. Also, good luck in Japanese it was one of the best classes I had so far.

Thats not necessarily true. Have you ever been to Japan? (Although you won't be responding since chances are you'll never be coming back here again)

Furthermore, anyone vouching for a textbook that isn't Genki is a dumbass, sorry.

Why is a thread this old still alive, anyway?

Oh~ i didn't notice that erikku bumped it from a while ago, but I forgot to mention to stay far, far, far away from the Japanese for Dummies book. It doesn't even start you anywhere close to what is proper, and it's rather impractical in comparison to even just learning a few words correctly by yourself rather than rote memorization in romaji.

Genki I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese I is an amazing textbook. It goes through the language in a very effective and systematic manner. But I'm sure most Japanese textbooks go about the same way, so if you find a cheaper one, I'm sure it'll be just as good.

http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrat...e=UTF8&s=books

But I seriously suggest taking a class, it's so much easier and better. Or even go to Japan, haha, that'd work.