.

Yes Tae Kim is definitely the way to go after RTK, in fact I'd recommend starting Tae Kim before you finish RTK (Unless of course you can persevere with not actually learning any real Japanese, then its best just to power through RTK).

Tae Kim is a good start. When you're done with it, I'd suggest "Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication". If you search the forums, I think there is an excel spreadsheet with all of the sentences from the book. If not, then sent me a private message.

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Kewickviper Wrote:(Unless of course you can persevere with not actually learning any real Japanese, then its best just to power through RTK).

Agreed, especially since there is quite a lot of Kanji readings in the guide which are more easily picked up post RTK.

If I may hijack this thread for a bit, I am doing Tae Kim myself at the moment (and I find it really good!) and am starting to wonder how far it will actually take you, because I of course don't expect to master Japanese grammar after completing it. Will doing Tae Kim (and I mean learning it all properly) give you a good enough foundation to be enough to learn the rest of the grammar you need effectively by immersion, or would you say it's better to continue your grammar studies with more textbooks or whatever resources there are?

Honestly I think JtMW is much better than Taekim for immediately after RTK. It covers just as much material, but has real manga examples for every concept, orders the concepts better, and explains them better. I think Taekim's explanation of は vs が was written very autistic-like and in a way that is hard to understand for a beginner.

I haven't done any grammar study outside of Tae Kim (unless you count Genki 1&2 but I don't think they contain anything extra) and I very rarely come across grammar points that I don't understand. Any that I do come across are either easily understood from context or weird idiomatic stuff that you just have to learn as though it was a word. I'm managing to play through 二の国 at the moment and the only problems I'm having are from this stupid pixie that talks in osaka-ben.

AlgoRhythmic Wrote:If I may hijack this thread for a bit, I am doing Tae Kim myself at the moment (and I find it really good!) and am starting to wonder how far it will actually take you, because I of course don't expect to master Japanese grammar after completing it. Will doing Tae Kim (and I mean learning it all properly) give you a good enough foundation to be enough to learn the rest of the grammar you need effectively by immersion, or would you say it's better to continue your grammar studies with more textbooks or whatever resources there are?

AlgoRhythmic Wrote:Will doing Tae Kim (and I mean learning it all properly) give you a good enough foundation to be enough to learn the rest of the grammar you need effectively by immersion, or would you say it's better to continue your grammar studies with more textbooks or whatever resources there are?

It depends; Tae Kim is not enough to cover all the grammar you're going to see -- you don't necessarily need to study from textbooks after that but you'll almost certainly need help from this forum or the grammar dictionaries to help you along after that.

Just to add one area that I think Tae Kim sucks at explaining is 〜ていく、〜てくる. This comes up absolutely everywhere and to start with I had no idea what it mean't.

[RawToast]

chamcham Wrote:Tae Kim is a good start. When you're done with it, I'd suggest "Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication". If you search the forums, I think there is an excel spreadsheet with all of the sentences from the book. If not, then sent me a private message.

The spreadsheet is still up on mediafire on the other topic; however, the google books link is no longer as generous (many pages removed now.) If you wish to get hold of this book, check Amazon but if it's really expensive (US site) or takes weeks to arrive (UK site) then try BookRepository[.com] instead. I believe the publisher has stopped trading, so it may become harder to get hold of!

I couldn't find any pdf copies of the book on the usual sources either.

Quote:Honestly I think JtMW is much better than Taekim for immediately after RTK. It covers just as much material, but has real manga examples for every concept, orders the concepts better, and explains them better. I think Taekim's explanation of は vs が was written very autistic-like and in a way that is hard to understand for a beginner.

I did Tae Kim's beginner section and didn't find his explanations very good. In addition, I didn't like the way more and more vocab is thrusted upon you in what's meant to be a pure grammar resource; especially when simplier words could be used. My personal 'favourite' for this would be:
高速道路を走る。
and
街をぶらぶら歩く (Why bother with ぶらぶら, just walk through town would do!)

The site has a lot of praise given to it, but I believe that's more down to it being a free resource. If you want to go the free way, then use imabi[.net] alongside TaeKim.

Genki 1+2, or DoJG would do a better job with grammar but either will set you back close to $100.

RawToast Wrote:Genki 1+2, or DoJG would do a better job with grammar but either will set you back close to $100.

Depending on if one pays for physical copies or opts for a more peer focused approach.

Thanks for the replies, appreciated. I think I'll start consuming media and reading immediately after finishing Tae Kim while doing Core vocab concurrently, and then I'll deal with new grammar when it actually shows up. Those grammar dictionaries I've been reading a lot about sounds interesting.

RawToast Wrote:If you want to go the free way, then use imabi[.net] alongside TaeKim.

Genki 1+2, or DoJG would do a better job with grammar but either will set you back close to $100.

Actually I've tried Genki for a bit, but I think I like Tae Kim more I must say (though I admit I didn't do much of Genki). The order of which things are introduced feels more natural in Tae Kim, and I actually like most of his explanations. Thanks for the link btw, that looks really useful.

RawToast Wrote:I did Tae Kim's beginner section and didn't find his explanations very good. In addition, I didn't like the way more and more vocab is thrusted upon you in what's meant to be a pure grammar resource; especially when simplier words could be used. My personal 'favourite' for this would be:
高速道路を走る。
and
街をぶらぶら歩く (Why bother with ぶらぶら, just walk through town would do!)

You don't want to increase your vocabulary?

Secondly, how does Tae Kim know what words you know?

RawToast Wrote:

chamcham Wrote:Tae Kim is a good start. When you're done with it, I'd suggest "Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication". If you search the forums, I think there is an excel spreadsheet with all of the sentences from the book. If not, then sent me a private message.

The spreadsheet is still up on mediafire on the other topic; however, the google books link is no longer as generous (many pages removed now.) If you wish to get hold of this book, check Amazon but if it's really expensive (US site) or takes weeks to arrive (UK site) then try BookRepository[.com] instead. I believe the publisher has stopped trading, so it may become harder to get hold of!

I couldn't find any pdf copies of the book on the usual sources either.

The book was republished August 2012. You can find it on Amazon.com.
You can also buy it from Kinokuniya.

[RawToast]

chamcham Wrote:The book was republished August 2012. You can find it on Amazon.com. You can also buy it from Kinokuniya.

That's good news, last time I looked at it you could only buy it through the 'used and new' section for >$50...

Quote:You don't want to increase your vocabulary?

Not from a 'grammar guide' in an in-optimal order. From his 'Complete Guide?" Then maybe so. It's not a case of him knowing what I know, each lesson adds a new set of vocabulary, which simply is not needed when the whole point is to teach you grammar.

daevil Wrote:When I'm done with RTK, is it wise to do Tae Kim grammar guide first and then start on the core decks? (I already know kana)

No, definitely not. You should do Tae Kim Basic and the first lesson from Tae Kim essential. Then you should work on your vocab (i.e. 500 sentences from Core2K). Then you should do Tae Kim Essential, and work on your vocab some more. And then, finally, do the rest of Tae Kim.

Otherwise, you'll be overwhelmed by that weird Eastern language Tae Kim, for some odd reason, decided to use in his Japanese grammar guide, and you won't be able to understand the examples.

You'll just come back here and annoy everyone to death with comments like "why does Tae Kim have to use big words I don't understand, like ぶらぶら?". I wish he just used one noun, one adjective, and one verb through the whole guide. Cause that wouldn't bore the 99% of us learning Japanese rather than just grammar, at all. It would be perfect.

RawToast Wrote:街をぶらぶら歩く (Why bother with ぶらぶら, just walk through town would do!)

He should've just used:
NounをVerb.

That way, you would've been able to learn Japanese grammar perfectly and not understand a single thing in Japanese. You'd been inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most useless skill ever.

ryuudou Wrote:Honestly I think JtMW is much better than Taekim for immediately after RTK.

I agree with this.

I would recommend reading through "Japanese the Manga Way", perhaps using "Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication" for exercises (if you feel like you need them; JtMW doesn't have any of it's own), and then start doing simple sentences with subs2srs. Use "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" et al for reference when you encounter things you don't understand later on.

Tae Kim is a good free resource, but JtMW is better (and _nearly_ free; only $16 on amazon).

fakewookie Wrote:You don't want to increase your vocabulary?
Secondly, how does Tae Kim know what words you know?

The issue is that you want to learn grammar and vocab separately (as per i+1 principle), especially since you'll learn vocab more easily from native sources instead of contex-less, canned, boring sentences. Grammar books shouldn't slow you down from learning grammar by having vocab get in the way unless it's required in order to properly demonstrate a grammar point.

I can't say I feel slowed down by the vocab introduced in every lesson in Tae Kim to be honest. Sure there are some new words most of the lessons, but it feels like at least 80-90% or something along those lines are usually words already used in some earlier lesson that you already know. The only lesson so far where the vocab felt overwhelming was in the honorific/humble lesson, and there it felt pretty necessary.

overture2112 Wrote:The issue is that you want to learn grammar and vocab separately (as per i+1 principle), especially since you'll learn vocab more easily from native sources instead of context-less, canned, boring sentences. Grammar books shouldn't slow you down from learning grammar by having vocab get in the way unless it's required in order to properly demonstrate a grammar point.

True. But using different vocabulary in different contexts is necessary. A grammar book can't just use fish as the only noun, whenever it happens to fit, or the examples will all get jumbled together in memory.

I think the vocabulary in Tae Kim is well below the level of grammar it is being used for. There is absolutely no reason why someone should be studying high level grammar if they know almost no vocab yet.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

overture2112 Wrote:The issue is that you want to learn grammar and vocab separately (as per i+1 principle), especially since you'll learn vocab more easily from native sources instead of context-less, canned, boring sentences. Grammar books shouldn't slow you down from learning grammar by having vocab get in the way unless it's required in order to properly demonstrate a grammar point.

True. But using different vocabulary in different contexts is necessary. A grammar book can't just use fish as the only noun, whenever it happens to fit, or the examples will all get jumbled together in memory.

I think the vocabulary in Tae Kim is well below the level of grammar it is being used for. There is absolutely no reason why someone should be studying high level grammar if they know almost no vocab yet.

We're discussing Taekim Basic. Everything overture 2112 has said is logically sound and true. It's part of the reason I also think Taekim's guide isn't very good.

Stansfield123 Wrote:No, definitely not. You should do Tae Kim Basic and the first lesson from Tae Kim essential. Then you should work on your vocab (i.e. 500 sentences from Core2K). Then you should do Tae Kim Essential, and work on your vocab some more. And then, finally, do the rest of Tae Kim.

You really should not be giving advice on what learning materials to use because you are not at all qualified to do so: You recently asked a question here that is covered in the first 3-4 chapters of every beginner textbook on the market. This advice of Tae Kim + Core is completely outdated and needs to finally be put to rest. Please don't take this personally at all, it's not like you are the first or only person to recommend this insanity, but definitely spend some time researching the many better methods and paths that are available.

There's a reason that both AJATT and JALUP recommend that you purchase textbooks aimed at beginners. The free materials that are available are not at all sufficient and buying beginner textbooks is a very small investment in your education. Also if your future plan is to steal everything anyway then why not at least start by stealing some good learning materials? Theft isn't just for games and movies.

Yes it's possible to spin your wheels and fumble through free resources like Tae Kim and Core X+1k but it's insanely boring when compared to cheap textbooks like Japanese the Manga Way. Furthermore you really want to start cherry-picking native materials as soon as possible and the order of the words you learn from a beginner textbook is a lot more conducive to being able to do that sooner.

There are so many great tools around that make the transition to native materials much more pleasant than it used it be. People need to be directed to those rather than this medieval torture of Tae Kim and Core. (RTK is torturous enough that there is no reason at all to invent more necessary evils.)

Stansfield123 Wrote:True. But using different vocabulary in different contexts is necessary. A grammar book can't just use fish as the only noun, whenever it happens to fit, or the examples will all get jumbled together in memory.

Agreed. Most textbook sentences are already canned and bad enough; limiting yourself to one noun would make it even worse. But that's a far cry from introducing vocab lists with multiple dozens of new words at the start of every chapter like I've seen in many textbooks (I'm looking at you, Wheelock's Latin...).

Stansfield123 Wrote:There is absolutely no reason why someone should be studying high level grammar if they know almost no vocab yet.

This is good advice.

I would also recommend Japanese the manga way. I've completed Tae Kim's Guide before JtMW and JtMW is the one that actually made me understand all the grammar points clearly. It has the best explanations on grammar I've read so far and I would suggest using it as your first grammar resource.

overture2112 Wrote:(I'm looking at you, Wheelock's Latin...).

Teaching a dead language is a different issue because you don't have any native speakers of the language so it's hard to make up new sentences with confidence that they are correct. Also, you don't have tons and tons of content available like in a living language; you just have to make do with the sources that have survived. (Latin is a bit different but in something like Wheelock that is geared towards literary, classical Latin it still applies.)

[Zgarbas]

Our lessons just started directly with long texts (about Aeneas, legends from the Roman Empire, what not) and the vocabulary lists came afterwards. Bonus points for my Latin teacher who would tell use various non-textbook stories at the end of each class to keep people interested. <3
It made Latin pretty cool to learn. A shame I forgot everything about it in the meantime.