G'day everyone, I've recently started going through RTK1, and am nearing the 25% mark, and born as a tunnel-vision expert (something I regret ) I like to organize my goals ahead of time. I'm thinking that grammar is probably the best place to go after RTK1 as reading (mostly manga) is my first real goal when it comes to learning Japanese. So could anyone please suggest any methods or textbooks to do so. Or if you think there's something more crucial when it comes to learning how to read then please say so.

First and foremost head over to http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/ (Tae Kim) not least of all because it is free.

Also:

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar - Very comprehensive and great book.

Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure - A more "fun" approach to grammar. Especially good for you as reading manga is something you are interested in.

You can read Tae Kim's grammar guide (google), which is free.
Or you can read imabi's grammar guide, which is also free.

For a reference book(s), dictionaries of Japanese grammar are comprehensive and clear but expensive. I read the basic and intermediate edition from cover to cover while reviewing the sentences in Anki, and it has helped me substantially, especially the basic edition. But this method is not for everyone. It can be used to simply look up unknown grammar structures you come across.

Depending on your understanding of basic Japanese sentence structural patterns (ＸはＹだ・です), I'm working on an Anki cloze delete deck based on Taeko Kamiya's Japanese Particle Workbook, which focuses on multiple examples of specific particle usage patterns and slowly introduces different patterns over time, with a reoccurring vocabulary (so it is easier to focus on the grammatical aspect). It may help with familiarizing common sentence patterns while reading through/working through Tae Kim's guide, which brings in conjugation and contraction, politeness levels, etc. rather early and may seem overwhelming to the beginner.

EDIT: If Japanese the Manga Way is something you find yourself interested in, there is an Anki deck available for download here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?bn3zm8dnwbifoc4

and the related image folder here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?c9u09v5ccxwpkgx

Tae Kim might seem overwhelming at first. That's because it is. There's a simple solution for coping with overwhelming floods of information. Just let them overwhelm you. Then let them overwhelm you again and overwhelm you some more.

It's like standing under a waterfall, but only three quarters of its previous water amount will be dropped on you every day. It's like standing under it turns off the spring bit by bit.

And the analogy is like Shroedinger's Cat as a metaphor. On a physical level it makes absolutely no sense going from common logic, but when applied to the field it's meant to be applied to, it turns out to be correct, even if you can't fathom how.

Edit: Oh, and Mr. Scotch, I hope you had a nice hiatus!

Zlarp Wrote:Edit: Oh, and Mr. Scotch, I hope you had a nice hiatus!

Had to postpone that due to a few conflicts with changing medications and other boring personal stuff. Pretty much ready to engage it properly this time. Although I've got to make the observation: only yesterday did I realize that a lot of the stuff I'm listening to seems to make a lot more sense, yet I can't explain why, and my reading speed seems to have skyrocketed without any reason other than reading various things offline and online, out of interest. Without being aware of it, I found myself being studious without "studying" specifically for it.

Strange feeling, when reading or listening to English and finding Japanese syntax more, um... sensible? Can't really explain it.

I know. Same feelings here all around

Thanks for all the great (and very quick) suggestions! But do people think learning grammar after RTK1 is the best step if my first - out of many - goals is to learn enough Japanese to read manga? The other major thing I have noticed is a large amount of words which I can only assume are pretty basic verbs in hiragana which for the most part I have no idea what they mean.

Jinklez Wrote:Thanks for all the great (and very quick) suggestions! But do people think learning grammar after RTK1 is the best step if my first - out of many - goals is to learn enough Japanese to read manga? The other major thing I have noticed is a large amount of words which I can only assume are pretty basic verbs in hiragana which for the most part I have no idea what they mean.

That's exactly what grammar will teach you, those basic hiragana verbs and particles that keep you from being able to assemble a sentence. What I did was speed through RTK1, then speed even faster through Tae Kim and the Anki cloze deletion deck to go along with it, and before I knew it I was reading manga - and still am.

Sounds like a plan . Hopefully I can get through RTK1 before the Uni semester starts back up but we'll see how it goes.

[RawToast]

Not a fan, but Tae Kim will set you off with a good base. I definetly recommend bookmarking imabi.net and jgram.org for more explanations/examples; sometimes Tae Kim's explanations are brief so it's good to have other resources.