For those of you studying Japanese, what textbook do you use? [Archive]

Plekto

01-10-2007, 10:28 PM

Romaji is actually a hinderance. Imagine learning say, Russian, with everything phonetically spelled out.

No. Of course you just learn their alphabet and dive right in. Japanese is infinately easier if you skip this step as well, since there are several sounds that our brains get wrong for months or years if we try to equate them to romaji. Even the vowels themselves are wrong. It should be something closer to ah ee oo eh oh - note no "I" or "U" in there. But to romaji-ize it properly would be A, E, O, E, O - so they kludge in I and U. Just makes it worse than not doing it in the first palce.

Then you get to hybrid sounds and instead of just smushing two phonetics together like you should, you get a total mess on paper. Frustrates students and teachers to no end.

Some sounds also are closer to three letters like the R/L sound - which isn't either actually, but more of a slightly rolled " *hl " sound, where the previous vowel bleeds through(a pretty close parallel exists in spanish, though)

So I second getting one that teaches you to imitate the sounds and jump right in. It's also easier, to be honest. You start learning words right away instead of trying to do english-japanese cunieform translation as an intermediate step. Note, *some* teachers nowadays do this approach and bypass Romaji entirely. They do this with Russian, German, Spanish, and so on... so why not Japanese?

Dipskana

01-10-2007, 11:41 PM

My class uses the Yookoso! series, which I think is rather spiffing. They stop using romaji after the first introductory chapter in the first book, so it's pretty conducive to memorizing the kana (especially when I was in first year, you had to know all your hiragana and katakana after the third week or else you were up the creek without a paddle). Nice pacing for kanji-learning as well, plus they list the kanji for a large amount of the kanji for other vocabulary as well.

Also: the drama between the characters in the dialogues is pretty entertaining fare.

Hrez

01-11-2007, 12:29 AM

I also use the JSL series that relies on Romaji. I sort of have a love hate relationship with the book. As it is, its a great tool for preparing for class, and having a class structured on the conversations and drills in the book. I just got to Japan for study abroad, and its obvious that my speaking fluidity is much higher than everyone elses, but my reading compared to them is much slower, which brings me to what i hate about JSL.

JSL really needs to ditch the romaji after the first book. I can understand for beginners not used to how the language should sound, but honestly, there is no excuse for having it in my third year of study.

Pierrot le Fou

01-11-2007, 12:38 AM

テーマ別
中級から学ぶ
日本語

assassin

01-11-2007, 02:26 AM

There is also Japanese the written language. one book for each textbook which is all studying kanji and kana. what you are supposed do is read the kanzi, sentences etc. and then play the tape and correct your self.

also there is a supplement to jsl which has all the drills, and the cc's in kanji. If you are no longer interested in romanzi you can just use the other smaller book (much smaller since it only has the drills in it)

Personally, i use all 3. there are many many jsl books all focusing on different parts. unfortunately most people don’t know that.

I wont even get into why i think learning the spoken language first is more important. personally i am from Ukraine and am fluent in Russian and Ukrainian. I never learned how to read first, i just learned the language. But if i pick up a book now i can easily read it.

and yes, anyone who uses the drills and memorizes the CC's with JSL is ALWAYS much much better at pronunciation and speaking than those who spend their study hours memorizing kanzi and reading books to themselves.

language first, writing second.

mikem

01-11-2007, 06:00 AM

I've never heard of JSL, but I've always thought Japanese for Busy People was a terrible book. Even after I saw the kana version the fact that they don't introduce kanji at all in the first book is just way wrong.

I like all of the following series of books for beginner level:
Situational Functional Japanese
Minna no Nihongo (Everyone's Japanese)
Genki*

When I was learning I cross referenced them a lot. Between my roommate and I we have a pretty extensive Japanese book collection.

It's kind of worth noting that written and spoke Japanese seem like two different languages a lot of the time. Also due to kanji there is a lot of synergy learning to read and write together. There's no alphabet here so you can't just "read" a book. Half of the time I can't even remember how to properly say a sentence, but I understand it perfectly. Just one of the joys of kanji. Don't forget it takes natives 6 years of schooling just to read their own language and they continue learning all the way through college.

You say that you think the spoke language is important. However if you use romaji to learn you won't be reading or speaking Japanese. It doesn't give you the right tone and it's very obvious who the people are that learned that way. Also, most romaji systems don't show the correct word. Both Tokyo and Osaka are great examples of this. Most foreigners will never pronounce Tokyo correctly.

The last thing I'll mention is that until you can read and write Japanese you'll just be a tourist to all of your friends. Any gaijin can pick up some basic Japanese by living here, it isn't that hard. Being able to read and write makes you appear as a smart, serious, well educated person.

*Genki's intermediate book is pretty bad. An intermediate book should be in Japanese and their's is still mostly in English.

kilreli

01-11-2007, 06:09 AM

I've always thought Japanese for Busy People was a terrible book.
- :gloomy: -

mikem

01-11-2007, 06:14 AM

- :gloomy: -

Since it was produced there have been a lot of better books published in my opinion.

My first Japanese textbook was a complete pile. It was published in the 1960s. I can't even remember the name cause it was just so bad. JFBP is amazing compared to that book. :)

ZaichikArky

01-11-2007, 07:18 AM

Here's one for the "genki" series. Before the japanese department at my school started using that, we used really this really crappy reader made by a college professor. Last year, we also started using "An integrated approach to intermediate Japanese", I'm gunna start using that in the middle of this quarter. Sucks that our text books have only gotten good when it's almost too late for me :p. At least I get to retake Japanese 5 and 6!

Urban~Ninja

01-11-2007, 11:53 AM

My school used to use Miria but just recently (Beginning this year) have began using the Wakata series, which i have flicked through and look very good and very helpful, but they are Australian published i think so hard to locate outside of our country i assume.

assassin

01-11-2007, 05:14 PM

It is quite useless for me to try and argue my point about JSL. I studied Japanese at Cornell where they strictly use JSL and have been teaching it with JSL for 30 years now. They have it down to a science. They know how to teach very very well. It really is just futile to try and argue with the rest of you guys, but i was just wondering if anyone else shared my love for the series of text.

I have met many Americans here studying Japanese and although i have been studying much shorter than them, i am constantly told how i speak way more naturally and fluently than them. They still say things like ii da yo or muri to omou. they just don’t know the grammar at all. I’m sure all of you know you cant say that, but using JSL imprints it into your brain so you never mess it up again.

at any rate, i can read just as quickly in Japanese as in romanzi. JSL romanzi is much different. In JSL it shows contradictions in the Hepburn system. The Hepburn system does not even follow its own rules.

Here’s what the JSL romanzi looks like

matu "i will wait"
mat-anai "i will not wait"
mat-imasu "i will wait"

JSL gives you simple rules like this, so now whenever i see a verb with a "tsu" ending i see it as tu. that way i can form the -masu form and the direct negative form very quickly. You may think its harder to read. It is not. you area always looking at the book as Japanese is read to you, so you pick it up very fast.

kilreli

01-11-2007, 05:45 PM

i dont see how writing matsu as matu is easier than just doing まつ.... it seems easier that way....but hey, its the way you were taught...so why wouldnt it be easier that way. :D

but maybe im jsut not understanding your explanation.....it confuses me, i admit. :frypan:

Varia

01-12-2007, 01:13 AM

I used The Genki books and I liked them a lot. Too bad there were only two of them.

As far as ro-maji goes, I use what the Japanese use. It works, and it's not weird like other methods. Well, to me anyways.
________
Ex250j (http://www.cyclechaos.com/wiki/Kawasaki_EX250J)

Daddaluma

01-12-2007, 04:17 AM

It is quite useless for me to try and argue my point about JSL. I studied Japanese at Cornell where they strictly use JSL and have been teaching it with JSL for 30 years now. They have it down to a science. They know how to teach very very well. It really is just futile to try and argue with the rest of you guys, but i was just wondering if anyone else shared my love for the series of text.

I studied Japanese at Cornell too! So naturally, I agree with everything you've said so far.

I believe I tried to defend the use of romaji in a couple of threads here in the past. In fact I was recently contemplating creating a thread just for that expressed purpose.

Anyhow, one criticism I have of the JSL's version of romaji is the double o in place of "ou". Why this is a big problem for me is later when you go to write Japanese on a computer, most of the words you type will come out correctly, except for when you try to type "tookyoo" and other double o words. When I was first learning to enter Japanese text on a keyboard, that was a really frustrating problem and it took a while to break the habit.

Also, Mari Noda, one of the writers of the textbook agrees that books 2 and 3 shouldn't be using romaji any longer and said that if they do make a new edition, that will be one of the changes they'll make.

mikem

01-12-2007, 05:35 AM

I used The Genki books and I liked them a lot. Too bad there were only two of them.

There are at least three. I have the terrible third one. "An integrated approach to intermediate Japanese" is the title.

There's really no defense against romaji. As a tool it doesn't solve any problems at all and only creates many many more. Romaji is not Japanese.

Your 待つ example is a non-issue. It conjugates just like all 五段　verbs do. Straight down the hiragana chart. Trying to go back and think of it as ma-tu is an extra and unnecessary step.

本当の日本語の方がいい。

EIJI

01-12-2007, 06:23 AM

assassin

01-12-2007, 02:43 PM

I studied Japanese at Cornell too! So naturally, I agree with everything you've said so far.

I believe I tried to defend the use of romaji in a couple of threads here in the past. In fact I was recently contemplating creating a thread just for that expressed purpose.

Anyhow, one criticism I have of the JSL's version of romaji is the double o in place of "ou". Why this is a big problem for me is later when you go to write Japanese on a computer, most of the words you type will come out correctly, except for when you try to type "tookyoo" and other double o words. When I was first learning to enter Japanese text on a keyboard, that was a really frustrating problem and it took a while to break the habit.

Also, Mari Noda, one of the writers of the textbook agrees that books 2 and 3 shouldn't be using romaji any longer and said that if they do make a new edition, that will be one of the changes they'll make.

really!?!? did you do the FALCON program?

I never was bothered by the tookyoo type thing. I caught on to writing きれい and what not instead of kiree.

hmm that’s very interesting that Mari Noda would say something like that. Personally i think the romanzi is still needed because new verbals and what not are introduced so one needs the accents for those new words.

plus, there is some very complicated grammar in books 2 and 3 which hiragana could just NOT explain.

ie. when you have sinakute wa ikenai, in Japanese -e wa can be turned into ya. so thus sinakutya ikenai. (Hepburn does not follow this simple rule kore wa becomes korya but -te wa becomes cha) I just don't see this kind of stuff being able to be explained to students who have never studied Japanese before with kana. Just use the teachers supplement for the drills if your that advanced.

Also, I have given up trying to convince anyone of why romanzi (JSL romanzi not Hepburn) is better for someone who has never studied japanese before. There are just too many people who have been taught the wrong way. They were taught hiragana first (the most useless thing you can be taught if you know no japanese. JSL teaches katakana first). Thus, if you take a JSL student and a traditionally taught student, the JSL student speaks more fluently and does not make stupid grammatical mistakes like previously mentioned.

assassin

01-12-2007, 02:52 PM

[QUOTE=mikem]

Your 待つ example is a non-issue. It conjugates just like all 五段　verbs do. Straight down the hiragana chart. Trying to go back and think of it as ma-tu is an extra and unnecessary step.

/QUOTE]

For someone who has never learned Japanese before this is more logical. Everyone keeps saying romanzi is useless, and I agree with you. The romanzi you were taught IS useless. JSL romanzi is way more logical and intuitive. It makes simple rules

Just add –anai to consonant verbals like hanasu matu iku to make the negative. And add –imasu to consonant verbals to make the mass form. Thus:

Hanasu becomes hanas-imasu.
But with Hepburn hanasu becomes hanashimasu (huh!?)

Matu becomes matanai
But with Hepburn matsu becomes machimasu (what!?)
But that same tsu becomes a ta when you change matsu to matanai
There are so many more…

Most of you already know Japanese, so you see this as useless. But for someone who know NOTHING about Japanese, this is WAY easier. Japanese is no longer hard. It is very simple and logical with JSL.

Plus JSL shows how accents change and the entire book is all accented.

Ex.

If you have a 3 mora verb like taberu. And the high accent is on be. When you change it to the –te form the high accent jumps left. Thus:

taBEru becomes TAbete (kudasai or something)

assassin

01-12-2007, 02:55 PM

Yes, romaji is not Japanese like katakana is not English.
There are no Japanese people use romaji daily basis. As Daddaluma said, romaji prevent you to type Japanese properly and quickly even for the Japanese.

At the same time many Japanese people believe katakana is English.
If you can say "マクドナルド= MacDonald's", you will survive in Japan.

Wrong, Japanese do use romanzi all the time. When they type on the computer.
IE. they literally type like arigatou gozaimasu and press enter to get ありがとうございます actually this is the same way I am typing now.

...but you prob know that

I don't want to survive in Japan. I want full fluency and linguistic comprehension of the language lol

kilreli

01-12-2007, 03:20 PM

There are just too many people who have been taught the wrong way. They were taught hiragana first (the most useless thing you can be taught if you know no japanese. JSL teaches katakana first).
Say what?
I actually found it to be quite useful to learn first. though, i admit my situation was a bit different. i was going to japan to live and i didnt know Japanese, so i taught myself how to read hiragara. I guess if its that situation, where your actually going to the country, it would help more to bypass that JSL stuff and just go straight in to the real thing.

Though, i will admit i did not leave Japan a pro, but thats just my fault as to how much hard work and effort i put in.:boggled:

Daddaluma

01-12-2007, 04:43 PM

really!?!? did you do the FALCON program?

I never was bothered by the tookyoo type thing. I caught on to writing きれい and what not instead of kiree.

hmm that’s very interesting that Mari Noda would say something like that. Personally i think the romanzi is still needed because new verbals and what not are introduced so one needs the accents for those new words.

plus, there is some very complicated grammar in books 2 and 3 which hiragana could just NOT explain.

I did indeed do the FALCON program and have sung its praises on this board a few times before. I take it you also did FALCON? When?

The biggest reason that the oo thing bothers me is that it serves no real purpose. It would be incredibly simple to learn that "ou" is pronounced "oo", and it would save a lot of frustration later when first learning to type in Japanese. I mean, it's not the hardest thing in the world to get over, but it's a needless frustration.

And I don't remember exactly what Mari Noda said because our FALCON group only met her once and that was about 5 years ago. I imagine they wouldn't wipe out romaji from the 2nd and 3rd books, but only where it makes sense. Like the core conversations for instance. By book 2 having the CCs in Japanese text would serve as much needed reading practice at the expense of only a little bit of learning speed in the speaking department.

Where romaji is useful for grammar explanations and such I imagine they would still keep it around. Then again, this is all a hypothetical anyway since it's not clear whether they are going to do a new edition at all.

Faumdano

01-12-2007, 07:22 PM

The problem is those same patterns you claim are logical are just as evident in kana as they are in what looks to be some modified 訓令式 system.

待つ　（まつ）

未然形　―　また　（あ　母音）
連用形　―　まち　（い　母音）
連体形　―　まつ　（う　母音）
終止形　―　まつ　（う　母音）
已然形　―　まて　（え　母音）
命令形　―　まて　（え　母音）

待た　+　助動詞
待たない　待たん（待たぬ）　待たず　待たざる
待たせる
待たれる
待とう　（またう）　待たん（待たむ）

If you were really concerned with the logicalness of the grammar, you'd be advocating a return to the traditional kana orthography.

言う→言わない　？！　言ふ→言はない　（当たり前！）
言う→言えば　？！　言ふ→言へば　（当たり前！）
言おう　？！　言う→言はう　（当たり前！）

If you're so concerned about the logicalness of it, why not learn how Japanese grammar is really organized and not some romanized clutch? Sure, as you say if you know no Japanese at all kana are pretty meaningless, however it takes what, maybe a week or two to learn all the kana?

ie. when you have sinakute wa ikenai, in Japanese -e wa can be turned into ya. so thus sinakutya ikenai. (Hepburn does not follow this simple rule kore wa becomes korya but -te wa becomes cha) I just don't see this kind of stuff being able to be explained to students who have never studied Japanese before with kana. Just use the teachers supplement for the drills if your that advanced.

Who cares? How is the pattern any harder to catch onto when written in kana, or for that matter written at all? It's a contraction - a merger of sounds that happens in almost the same way in English -

What are you doing?
What are ya doing?
What 'cha doin' ?

It's a phonological phenomenon and is unrelated to romaji or kana.

By that same logic, is exposing students to the 何をしているのだ　→　何してんだ somehow easier in romaji? No, again it's completely unrelated to what orthography you use.

Romaji is a clutch. Anything you claim it's useful for can be seen equally easily from a words kana representation. Also, if you were so concerned about things being logical you should be asking to be taught traditional orthography and Japanese grammar classifications.

[edit] I forgot to include the prime advantage to being able to read with relative proficiency: homonyms.

The 和語 homonyms are managable without kanji for the most part, ie
かみ　髪　神　紙　上
はし　端　箸　橋

But chinese compounds are a whole other matter.

Take a random pronunciation, say コウキ

後期　好機　綱紀　校旗　光輝　香気　後記　高貴　興起　公器　好奇　紅旗　広軌　皇紀　光機　口気　好期　好気　校紀　校規　衡器

Without learning to read, good luck coming up with the correct meaning with pronunciation alone. If you can read, the meanings of all of the above are almost immediately apparent.
――――――――――――

As an aside, has anyone's Japanese courses taught them somewhere along the way the Japansese terms for grammar, and the terms for how it is organised?

That is, given a definition like:
ん
[助動]《推量の助動詞「む」の音変化》活用語の未然形に付く。
１婉曲的表現を表す。「あらんかぎりの力を出す」
２（「んとする」の形で）意志・推量の意を表す。「言わんとすることはわかった」

Would you be able to make heads or tails of it?

Crowley

01-12-2007, 07:31 PM

Romaji is a clutch.

Ways to tell you've been studying japanese too long ;-)

assassin

01-12-2007, 11:53 PM

I did indeed do the FALCON program and have sung its praises on this board a few times before. I take it you also did FALCON? When?

The biggest reason that the oo thing bothers me is that it serves no real purpose. It would be incredibly simple to learn that "ou" is pronounced "oo", and it would save a lot of frustration later when first learning to type in Japanese. I mean, it's not the hardest thing in the world to get over, but it's a needless frustration.

And I don't remember exactly what Mari Noda said because our FALCON group only met her once and that was about 5 years ago. I imagine they wouldn't wipe out romaji from the 2nd and 3rd books, but only where it makes sense. Like the core conversations for instance. By book 2 having the CCs in Japanese text would serve as much needed reading practice at the expense of only a little bit of learning speed in the speaking department.

Where romaji is useful for grammar explanations and such I imagine they would still keep it around. Then again, this is all a hypothetical anyway since it's not clear whether they are going to do a new edition at all.

Yeah i did falcon (^^) I actually did it this summer and am now in Japan working through the books.

I see what you mean about the CC, that indeed could be done that way.

Yeah doing a new edition is not as easy as it sounds, because apart from just the book there is ALL the audio and if they start editing the book they will find some of the many mistakes in the audio and the test which they would just HAVE to fix. Thus, it will cost thousands and thousands of dollars to do all that. This is what Sukle-sensee told me when I asked him about why the hell we have to learn the word waapuro. He said that it's much easier to learn a word like waapuro and just put up with it rather than changing the entire text (the rest 99.99% of it which is all useful). It is just not worth the time and money.

Glad to find another falconer! Rare bread, but they know how it's done.

assassin

01-13-2007, 12:05 AM

faumdamo,
Take a quick look at all the things you wrote. It is in hiragana and kanzi. Try to show that to someone just learning Japanese and they will be scared out of their mind. New learners of japanese cannot understand any of that. Thus they must spend months studying hiragana/kana/kanzi whatever before they can get into actually speaking the language. At cornell, we studied for about 10 solid hours a day. On the first day we were taught how to speak and for 6 weeks did nothing but speak perfect japanese. Then we learned all the hiragana and katakana as well as 100 kanzi in merely two weeks. BECAUSE people knew the language the kanazi/kana was WAY easier and they picked it up REALLY fast.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying at all that people should not study kana or whatever, I'm saying that those who have been taught the traditional way make many BAD HABITS that last with them for YEAR (i have seen and heard wayyyyy to much bad japanese from americans who have been studying 5+ years). JSL'ers do not make these mistakes from the beginning, and keep their Japanese smooth. As daddaluma would agree, at falcon they correct your japanese right on the spot and DO NOT let you speak any bad japanese. I am here studying in japan now and the classes SUCK. japanese think you can just "pick up" japanese. The same way they think that you can just "pick up" english. Thus many of the students english in the university i am in SUCKS. they just have not been taught the right way. they have been taught the way most people are taught japanese by japanese people. Which is the WRONG way.

as for your 言う→言わない

the reason iu becomes iwanai is because a long time ago japanese had the vowles wu wi wo we and of course wa. But japanese can only saw wa now. Thus, a long time ago iu was not iu it was iwu. Thus the same rule applies you drop the -u and add a -anai to make then negative. thus:

iwu becomes iwanai.

also if you have kau (buy) same thing applies.

Kau is actually kawu. if you add -eru (the potential) it becomes Kaweru. but japanese cant say we so the W is dropped. and comes kae-ru.

But as always, this battle cannot be won.... might as well give up and get back to topic, what text book do you use :bang:

Faumdano

01-13-2007, 12:41 AM

as for your 言う→言わない

the reason iu becomes iwanai is because a long time ago japanese had the vowles wu wi wo we and of course wa. But japanese can only saw wa now. Thus, a long time ago iu was not iu it was iwu. Thus the same rule applies you drop the -u and add a -anai to make then negative. thus:

iwu becomes iwanai.

also if you have kau (buy) same thing applies.

Kau is actually kawu. if you add -eru (the potential) it becomes Kaweru. but japanese cant say we so the W is dropped. and comes kae-ru.

But as always, this battle cannot be won.... might as well give up and get back to topic, what text book do you use :bang:

No.

本来：　言ふ(ihu)　現代：　言う (iu)
本来：　買ふ(kahu)　現代：　買う (kau)
本来：　買へる(kaheru)　現代：　買える (kaeru)

ハ行四段動詞

未然形：　言は　→　言わ
連用形：　言ひ　→　言い
連体形：　言ふ　→　言う
終止形：　言ふ　→　言う
已然形：　言へ　→　言え
命令形：　言へ　→　言え

There were never any verbs that ended in わ・ゐ・ゑ・を - those only ever came in the middle of words / at the start.

Speak not of what you know not.

But as always, this battle cannot be won.... might as well give up and get back to topic, what text book do you use

http://www.geocities.jp/niwasaburoo/shuyoumokuji.html
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/

assassin

01-13-2007, 01:05 AM

im talking about anchient japanese here. and yes i do know what i am speaking of.

mpz

01-13-2007, 01:45 AM

New learners of japanese cannot understand any of that. Thus they must spend months studying hiragana/kana/kanzi whatever before they can get into actually speaking the language.
Learning the hiragana and katakana won't take more than a few days for a dedicated learner. Maybe a week if you lack motivation.

Months is just way out of the ballpark.

BAD HABITS
Roomaji makes it much easier to pick up bad habits than pure kana introduction. Especially so if your native tongue is something like English. It's much easier to associate the Japanese sounds to newly introduced glyphs rather than strings of roman letters that are already loaded with significance.

Of course, any introductory course that does not start out with extensive pronounciation practice (be it coupled with kana introduction or not) is just preparation for massive failure. Moreso if the teacher lacks the balls to correct the students' pronounciation.

Faumdano

01-13-2007, 03:46 AM

im talking about anchient japanese here. and yes i do know what i am speaking of.

Care to back that assertion up with more than talk? Please, by all means provide atleast one reference in English or Japanese that agrees with your claim.

Perhaps you can start by reading this http://kstn.fc2web.com/kanadukahi.html

[edit] A slight correction: there are a handful of ワ行 verbs, however they didn't work the same way as verbs do in the modern language:

Example:
現代：　据える

未然形：　据ゑ
連用形：　据ゑ
終止形：　据うる
連体形：　据う
已然形：　据うれ
命令形：　据ゑ

ゐる　（居る）

未然形：　ゐ
連用形：　ゐ
終止形：　ゐる
連体形：　ゐる
已然形：　ゐれ
命令形：　ゐよ

Daddaluma

01-13-2007, 04:21 AM

If you use kana to teach grammar instead of romaji you are limited by the fact that you cannot separate the consonants from the vowels.

If you use romaji, you can make one simple rule that applies to all verbs. First you define consonant verbs and vowel verbs and then you simply say, for consonant verbs, you drop “u” and add “imasu”. For vowel verbs you drop “ru” and add “masu”. Done.

You can’t do this with kana because you cannot separate the “t” from the “u” in つ. つ becomes ち. む becomes み and so on and so on. Kana adds a level of needless complication.

Learning the hiragana and katakana won't take more than a few days for a dedicated learner. Maybe a week if you lack motivation.

Months is just way out of the ballpark.

To learn kana to the level at which you can read and work with romaji would certainly take more than a couple of days. I’d say a month is easily required before you could read kana at a reasonable pace.

And don’t forget that during that month where you’re struggling to memorize 96 foreign characters, you’re also trying to learn new vocab and grammar at the same time. Mixing everything together right from the start hinders progress. It makes the language that much more inaccessible and provides needless barriers to understanding.

It makes much more sense to make learning basic grammar rules as easy as possible. Remove everything that could possibly hinder that progress so the student can focus on learning to form basic sentences quickly and accurately. Once the student has acquired a certain level of understanding of basic Japanese grammar, learning kana will no longer impede that progress and can be done much more proficiently as well since the student now has a base to work with.

Whereas, if you learn kana right off the bat, it does not provide a base to work with to learn basic grammar and vocab. It in fact only makes it more difficult to memorize at the beginning.

Roomaji makes it much easier to pick up bad habits than pure kana introduction. Especially so if your native tongue is something like English. It's much easier to associate the Japanese sounds to newly introduced glyphs rather than strings of roman letters that are already loaded with significance.

This is just pure crap.

Sure, if a beginner student with absolutely no Japanese encounters romaji, of course they’ll pronounce it wrong. But if that same student came across the symbol ら, they wouldn’t even be able to take a stab at the pronunciation. Pronunciation must be learned by listening and repeating. It is not in any way shape or form more difficult to pronounce the Japanese sound “ふ” when it’s written フ, fu, or hu. In each case you simply have to learn the correct pronunciation and then do that anytime you see the corresponding symbol.

assassin

01-13-2007, 02:50 PM

As always, this is a pointless argument. But I do know a few things:

1. People who have had years of Japanese study go to FALCON and start with their beginner program because they wont last one minute in the higher classes.

2. Those who use JSL the CORRECT WAY (i.e. the falcon way) are years ahead of other Americans in Japanese.

The natural question is: “How do you know?” Because I have seen the people at falcon and the people here in Japan. I have talked to them, heard their Japanese, and its always the same, those who used JSL are much better.

At any rate, back to topic, what text do you use?

oh and i forgot, i don't have any evidence, it is mear speculation, but that is all you one can do at this point. The Japanese I speak of is like way way before Japanese even knew they were Japanese. It is just a theory, but it is an interesting one, because indeed the super secret hidden W always pops up in Japanese.

Kaji

01-13-2007, 04:00 PM

I'm not going to hop into the middle of the romanji debate, other than to say that I am wholeheartedly against it. You can learn to associate the pronunciations with the characters by practicing reading and recreating the charts several times over and you should be perfectly functional within a week, especially if you supplement this by transcribing kana-only texts and practice using the chart to sound them out.

That said, as for textbooks and such, my personal favorite has always been Nakama. I switched to Yokoso after transferring due to the fact that that's what the school I got my degree from uses, but looking through the first volume and seeing "meeshi", "sensee", and "tookyoo" absolutely turned me off from ever reccomending it to someone else.

keekers

01-14-2007, 01:54 AM

These are on my bookshelf right now:

なかま１
なかま２
中級の日本語
中級から上級への日本語
留学生の日本語１
留学生の日本語２
青空

All from just 2 and a half years of study. -_-

laggedreaction

01-14-2007, 09:31 AM

Some of the stuff on my shelf:

テーマ別中級から学ぶ
テーマ別上級で学ぶ
ニューアプローチ中上級日本語
漢字マスター１級漢字2000
完全マスター1級日本語能力試験読解問題対策
完全マスター漢字日本語能力試験1級レベル
完全マスター語彙日本語能力試験1.2級レベル
完全マスター1級日本語能力試験文法問題対策
実力アップ!日本語能力試験1級文法編
実力アップ!日本語能力試験1級聴解問題
実力アップ!日本語能力試験1級読解編

I'm pretty sure I did fine on my 2級 exam and want to start preparing early for next year's 1級.

mpz

01-14-2007, 02:37 PM

If you use kana to teach grammar instead of romaji you are limited by the fact that you cannot separate the consonants from the vowels.
That is an asinine argument. When working with hiragana you don't *need* to separate consonants from vowels, the appropriate column in the hiragana chart automatically gives you the correct syllable.

Crowley

01-14-2007, 03:32 PM

It's a good point about computer input though.

Somrand Umguy

01-14-2007, 04:38 PM

I'm one of those people who have been studying Japanese for ages and still sucks at it. It has nothing to do with the methodology... it's just my classes happen to have sucked. (American public high school and the like)

Last semester I took two courses in linguistics at a Japanese university. One was just a regular (basic) linguistics course, and the other was on Nara Period linguistics. I found studying linguistics to be rather interesting, but it did not help me at all due to my previous years of study. Had I started with it I would probably have learned faster.

To learn this way probably has to be in romaji. I dont particularly like romaji, but its mostly because im so used to reading hiragan and katakana.

And I absolutely despise romaji in a non unispace font :)

Plekto

01-14-2007, 06:37 PM

That is an asinine argument. When working with hiragana you don't *need* to separate consonants from vowels, the appropriate column in the hiragana chart automatically gives you the correct syllable.

Or you could look at it like you would if you were say, learning Hebrew.(which is simmilar to Japanese in many ways, but many more Americans are familiar with). Symbol=sound. Vowels and consonants and such aren't really part of the equation, since there aren't really the same sorts of rules as in most Western(tm) languages that require them. Technically Hebrew is written without ANY vowels at all.

You just string the sounds together and the vowels are just part of it(ie - naturally happen, based upon a few basic rules about meter and timing. Now, Japanese is different because you don't add them in, but the idea is the same.

Simmilarities
1: - More than 26 letters/glyphs
2: - symbol=sound. No weird pronounciations.
3: - No english equivalency. Must just grind away and learn the symbols and sounds.
4: - Very compact language with simple grammar structure.
5: - Simmilar written styles.(IMO, at least) - One or two simple strokes with an older right to left reading pattern(it's not uncommon to see some left-right as well, like in Japanese, in the last few hundred years or so)

You just have to dive in and skip romaji or simmilar crutches. Yes, it means that it's not going to work well in most classroom settings. In Hebrew, you generally learn the symbols and sounds privately and go into your first classes knowing at least this much. The equivalent would be to just learn Japanese on your own or with a tutor for the first semester's worth and then jump right into the second class(one without any english in it).

My last teacher, btw - he was prety cool. Spoke virtually no english the entire class. Rough learning curve at first, but your brain learns fast when it has no other choice and nothing to fall back on.

P.S. - another question - where in Los Angeles can I find a Japanese/English keyboard for my PC? Surely it must exist - or do I have to order it from Japan or something?

mikem

01-15-2007, 05:49 AM

As an aside, has anyone's Japanese courses taught them somewhere along the way the Japansese terms for grammar, and the terms for how it is organised?

We learn it pretty piecemeal. We regularly use 一段、五段、他動詞、自動詞. I don't think I could even remember what the kanji looks like for most of the other terms. I've tried to pick up a few others on my own because its near impossible to discuss Japanese (language) with Japanese (people) without knowing them.

We're required to know a lot of our word definitions forward and backwards in only Japanese. I would guess the grammar vocabulary comes after the next semester, but we get pushed pretty hard. (In the not-really-great sort of way.)

keekers

01-15-2007, 06:25 AM

I was never really taught grammar terms in Japanese, I just picked them up from my teachers constantly using them.

assassin

01-15-2007, 12:17 PM

i dont even know grammer terms in english. ask me what a verb is and i cant tell you man. seriosly whats a verb? is run a verb? i think it might be.

Also im fluent in ukranian and russian, and i dont evne know what the words are for verb noun or whatever it is.

in jsl there are only three classes which makes things very simple

mikem

01-15-2007, 12:55 PM

in Japanese there are only three classes which makes things very simple

Fixed.

Here's a couple really basic Japanese/English grammar words:

verb - 動詞　「どうし」
noun - 名詞　「めいし」
"ru" verb - 一段「いちだん」
"u" verb - 五段　「ごだん」
irregular - 不規則「ふきそく」
intransitive - 自動詞　「じどうし」
transitive - 他動詞　「たどうし」

Can't think of anything else without looking them up. Too lazy for that.

(Edit: Fixed my typos and lack of English grammar knowledge.)

assassin

01-15-2007, 01:47 PM

Fixed.

thank you :frypan:

Faumdano

01-15-2007, 04:00 PM

Fixed.

Here's a couple really basic Japanese/English grammar words:

verb - 動詞　「どうし」
noun - 名詞　「めいし」
"ru" verb - 一段「いちだん」
"u" verb - 五段　「ごだん」
irregular - 不規則「ふきそく」
passive - 自動詞　「しどうし」
active - 他動詞　「たどうし」

Can't think of anything else without looking them up. Too lazy for that.
passive - 自動詞　「しどうし」
active - 他動詞　「たどうし」

Those should be intransitive and transitive respectively. That is,

intransitive: He fell
transitive: He fell the giant

mpz

01-15-2007, 10:07 PM

passive - 自動詞　「しどうし」
It's じどうし.

laggedreaction

01-16-2007, 07:28 AM

Wait, I just skimmed over the thread, but why does assassin keep going on about Japanese Sign Language and romaji?

mikem

01-16-2007, 08:20 AM

intransitive: He fell
transitive: He fell the giant

Thanks! I actually have no clue what active, passive, transitive, intransitive, potential, and all that mean so I often get them confused. I understand the function in the languages, but the words are meaningless to me.

Yay for expensive private education I guess? :bang: :boggled:

(Also fixed my typo. Sadly I do that when writing too. Which isn't nearly as silly as me writing 森 upside down yesterday.)

mikem

01-16-2007, 08:51 AM

I'm doubling posting cause I had a new thought on this thread.

This is mostly too assassin, but everyone should feel free to weigh in.

While I was doing my homework last night I was realizing how completely useless romaji has become for me. I need to know it to type, but I would only ever bother writing it if I had to talk to a Japanese-only speaking person and technical limitations required it.

So the topic is: How long would you continue to use romaji for learning or study or communication? (In other words for anything other than computer input.)

I personally consider it obsolete by the end of the first semester of college-level Japanese. assassin said he found it useful for learning, but after a very short period of learning everyone I know internalizes the verb inflections. America has some really bad Japanese language programs, but even they can do verbs without romaji.

assassin

01-16-2007, 01:40 PM

Wait, I just skimmed over the thread, but why does assassin keep going on about Japanese Sign Language and romaji?

sign language? you mean with hands and stuff?

羽之助

01-16-2007, 01:45 PM

He's confusing your "jsl" acronym with "japanese sign langauge" when you are talking about the textbook "Japanese: The Spoken Language".

I would have thought you were talking about "Japanese as a Second Language", by the way.

assassin

01-16-2007, 01:49 PM

So the topic is: How long would you continue to use romaji for learning or study or communication? (In other words for anything other than computer input.)

I personally consider it obsolete by the end of the first semester of college-level Japanese. assassin said he found it useful for learning, but after a very short period of learning everyone I know internalizes the verb inflections. America has some really bad Japanese language programs, but even they can do verbs without romaji.

Most certainly. The only reason i keep using JSL romanzi is
1) in JSL all the romanzi has accents on it. The entire book shows the ups and downs on every mora. Thus, if you are reading this book (when you cant use the tapes) you know where to raise and lower your accent. Plus, when introducing new grammer, it also show the accents on the grammer and how the accent changes when you put certain words with certain accents togetehr. I dont think this can be shown in hiragana as well, its been tried and just failed. Its too hard to understand for people.

if you say accents dont matter then i dont even want to talk to you.

and 2) the JSL romanzi shows where roots of words come from much better than hepburn or hiragana for that matter. ie. it does not write things like cha or shu or whatever it writes it as tya and syu. err.... i guess if you have never used this book with the tapes and have never read it then its kind of pointless for me to argue my point. Hell i felt the same way about romanzi until i found JSL.

but damn i have keeping talking about this and sorry that i keep writing responces about this damn romanzi thing. but yeah, what text book do you use?

keekers

01-16-2007, 09:42 PM

Accent can easily be shown with hiragana by using lines or brackety thingies over the high points in the word, like in Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese.

And I have never used any romaji in my Japanese classes. I only know it for computer input.

Faumdano

01-16-2007, 10:44 PM

1) in JSL all the romanzi has accents on it. The entire book shows the ups and downs on every mora. Thus, if you are reading this book (when you cant use the tapes) you know where to raise and lower your accent. Plus, when introducing new grammer, it also show the accents on the grammer and how the accent changes when you put certain words with certain accents togetehr. I dont think this can be shown in hiragana as well, its been tried and just failed. Its too hard to understand for people.

Pitch falls immediately after the bolded character.
端（はし）
箸（はし）
橋（はし）

ある
食（た）べる
喰（く）う
喰（く）らう
欲（ほ）しい

2) the JSL romanzi shows where roots of words come from much better than hepburn or hiragana for that matter. ie. it does not write things like cha or shu or whatever it writes it as tya and syu. err.... i guess if you have never used this book with the tapes and have never read it then its kind of pointless for me to argue my point. Hell i felt the same way about romanzi until i found JSL.

しゃ　しゅ　しょ　How is that not perfectly clear?

As for all this "oh it's oh so hard and will scare off the poor students if we jump into kana right away". Bullshit. If kana scares the student off, they won't make it far into Japanese study anyway. Or rather, they were never serious about it in the first place.

Now, as for the "well, it will take away from the learning at first". Bullshit. Play "repeat after me" at first or something then when the students don't yet know the kana. Have the TA/Instructor read the stuff aloud at first; it's not like you'll be dealing with sentences of any complexity for some time any way.

Why is it that so many people treat students of Japanese like they're some fragile waif of a human being? "Oh we can't possible do it that way; it's too much for them". Bullshit.

but damn i have keeping talking about this and sorry that i keep writing responces about this damn romanzi thing. but yeah, what text book do you use?

Foundation (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/)
Thereafter (http://www.geocities.jp/niwasaburoo/mokuji.html)

mikem

01-17-2007, 06:56 AM

1) in JSL all the romanzi has accents on it.

This is done excellently in one of my books in hiragana. I personally just get friends to correct me. Learning that from a book is not helpful for me, but I do think all books should contain it.

I dont think this can be shown in hiragana as well, its been tried and just failed. Its too hard to understand for people.

The opposite is true for me. I don't understand accent marks in romaji and I don't understand verb inflections in romaji. I couldn't properly conjugate verbs until my teacher here explained the hiragana chart method of verb conjugation.

if you say accents dont matter then i dont even want to talk to you.

I'd say 90% of the time people don't understand me it is because of the wrong tone inflection. I can usually talk my way around vocabulary problems. It is very important and is the main thing I have my friends help me with.

2) the JSL romanzi shows where roots of words come from much better than hepburn or hiragana for that matter.

For me this is not true. The hepburn system is hard to read. Your system is impossible to read for me as an American born native English speaker. Hiragana is very simple for me to read and very easy for me to understand grammar points with.

For example I could not understand ～なければならない in romaji because I didn't realize it was essentially a negative if statement. The first time I studied it, it immediately made sense.

but damn i have keeping talking about this and sorry that i keep writing responces about this damn romanzi thing. but yeah, what text book do you use?

Your point of view on this is completely new and completely foreign to me. It would have only hurt my learning process, but I am still very curious about how it has helped yours. I also find it interesting that you've taken so much Japanese, but still bother with romaji. To me it just represents an extra, and unnecessary step.

I do think I understand your point though and realize that you find your system much easier. I wrote this response specifically to be about what I personally find easiest for me. I'm kind of a big learning styles guy anyway.

If you really want to talk about books I really like the intermediate one I am using:

中級日本語 published by 凡人社 (bojinsha)

It's entirely in Japanese and there is no English explanations of anything. The Japanese explanations only assume beginner level Japanese. If you are planning to use it for self study you probably will need someone who can answer any questions you have about the grammar.

keekers

01-17-2007, 10:22 PM

I think kanji should be taught from the very beginning along with kana, but maybe that's just me.

assassin

01-17-2007, 10:39 PM

i give up...

I Monkey

01-18-2007, 08:17 PM

I'm Using Japanese For Busy People and have the first 2 volumes. I borrowed the 3rd volume from a friend of mine. I'm just over half of the 2nd book but since I haven't been studying Japanese for a very long time, I forgot most of it. So I'm going to repeat it ALL(again) when I'm graduated this year.(I don't really have time to study Japanese because I'm too busy with school). Oh man... repeating everything makes me kinda crazy man... I repeated book 1 for about 5 times and the first half of book 2 about 2 times because I can't continue with the next lesson when I forgot the previous ones >.<
When I started learning Japanese(on my own) I only used romaji. And after about half of book 1, I started learning hiragana and katakana. And now I can read hiragana and katakana, I hate romaji. Romaji makes my eyes itch:frypan:
So I also think learning hiragana and katakana first is best:clap: