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: