I have recently just returned from a Japanese hiatus and need to relearn grammar, preferably from a free resource. (I want to learn this concurrently with RTK1 and vocab.)

When I was in my Japanese class, we used the Genki textbook series. I still own both textbooks and recently I tried going through it (as painful as it was) to try and relearn the grammar. It's really a pain having to go through all of the filler material just to find out what I need to know. So if there is a better resource for grammar, I'd be more than happy to dump Genki and be done with メリーさん forever.

Also, for anyone who can answer, how much grammar does Genki really cover? I never made it through the 2nd book entirely because I never completed second-year Japanese. And if you are giving me a source, how much of grammar does it touch on?

Have a look at Tae Kim's grammar guide. It's the only grammar resource I've used and it was useful. I know a lot of people on this site have used it/like it too. Plus it has the massive bonus of being free. Have a look at the table of contents because it says what grammar points are introduced on each page so you should get an idea of whether it's stuff you already know or not.

For something a little more accessible and professional, try this:

http://www.gwu.edu/~eall/vjg/vjghomepage/vjghome.htm

It is a 66 part series with full audio from a native speaker. Each lesson is a flash clip which not only describes the related grammar pattern a lot better than Tae Kim has done in his grammar guide, but it provides an invaluable visual guide to how these patterns are used in everyday Japanese. Something which is hard to do in the static form of textual guides or text books.

A George Washington University free educational project.

Is there a way to rip off those flash files?

I would highly suggest taking a look at my site http://www.imabi.net

Although it still doesn't get mentioned a lot, it continues to be expanded and already has far more information in one place than places like Tae Kim.

pen0id Wrote:Is there a way to rip off those flash files?

I've tried, although it seems to be hosted by the server in that it needs an active connection to the host in order to upload the file.

If someone were to be able to successfully rip those flash files for offline use, it would be excellent. They are great as free online resources, but would be even better as fully available offline (for example: my internet connection is very, very unreliable).

That is to say that you can download the flash file itself rather easily through Firefox, without any extensions, however upon opening said files, in either a flash player or web browser, nothing happens. It seems that you have to access the direct page while online and connect to the server in order for it to load the animation. Really wish it wasn't programmed in such a way. Still, an excellent free resource (when I am able to access it).

uisukii Wrote:For something a little more accessible and professional, try this:

http://www.gwu.edu/~eall/vjg/vjghomepage/vjghome.htm

It is a 66 part series with full audio from a native speaker. Each lesson is a flash clip which not only describes the related grammar pattern a lot better than Tae Kim has done in his grammar guide, but it provides an invaluable visual guide to how these patterns are used in everyday Japanese. Something which is hard to do in the static form of textual guides or text books.

A George Washington University free educational project.

That site is awesome and you should feel awesome for posting it!

I highly recommend Japanese The Manga Way. Not free, but cheap compared to Genki and other textbooks aimed at schools. And the most important difference: it's the complete opposite of boring ジョン and アリス conversations; all grammar is demonstrated with fragments of real manga. There are a few other textbooks built around manga but I think this is the only high quality one, with a solid basic grammar coverage and excellent explanations and analyses. Although the transcriptions and explanations are detailed enough so that absolute beginners can understand most of the fragments with enough effort, I think you will get even more out of it if you already have some knowledge of Japanese. It contains many interesting non-crucial notes and vocabulary as well.

This might be obvious, but I also recommend using more than one resource to get explanations written in different perspectives.

pen0id Wrote:Is there a way to rip off those flash files?

I was able to capture the first lesson using the Video Record feature of Any Video Converter Ultimate. So yes, it's possible.

The videos appear to be on the server as simple FLV files. You can dig out the URL from the player's XML manifest (e.g., view-source:http://www.gwu.edu/~eall/vjg/02wordorder/02wordorder_config.xml), but it appears the Web server is configured not to permit direct download outside of the SWF player.

These lessons are really good. You, uisukii, are a good person.

You can download them with
Replay Media Catcher
or
Orbitdownloader
or just copy them from
Temporary Internet Files

Line-by-line audio and parallel texts kanji-spaced hiragana-English
+ explanations in plain English are to be found here:

http://users.bestweb.net/%7Esiom/martian_mountain/JCP/

!GrVJGr.7z.001
!GrVJGr.7z.002
!GrVJGr.7z.003
JCtexts.7z

gaiaslastlaugh, if there is anyone to thank for finding those links it's buonaparte/aYa- it's thanks to her website that I found it. It truly is a goldmine of amazing resources.

Thank you for all of the suggestions, I will definitely be checking some of these out.

For those having flash issues (be it playback or ripping/downloading the files) with the Visualizing Japanese Grammar website, I've screen recorded them and have made a media based Anki deck for anyone interested in such.

Mediafire link

The folder contains an Anki package and the necessary media files. If you are like me, who is unable to rip the files for offline use (Wine issues), then the recorded MVK files alone might be of interest.

VLC player, Anki's MPlayer, and other media players which come as default with most distro packages these days can play MKV containers without issues. Not sure if iTunes or Windows Media Player is capable of handing the codec.

Will probably take at least a day or two to upload all 66 lessons.

The flash files are just an implementation of a regular video player. The vast majority of this kind of players (except, sadly for us, youtube, the old megavideo -don't know about the new mega- and a handful of others), as is the case with this one, work by downloading a .flv or .mp4 file into a temporary directory, so it's easy to recover them while the player is still loaded (if you close the browser or the tab it's in, the file vanishes). If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution, you can just skip to the end of this message to find some useful console commands.

In the OSes that allow it, the player *erases* the file as soon as it is created, way before it is completely downloaded. That way it "hides" it somehow, but the flash process still keeps a hold onto them (and occupy you hard drive until the flash process is closed, even if they aren't listed on any directory). The thing is, with a little magic, you can still read them from outside.

Last time I checked on MS Windows you could just simply copy the relevant file from C:\Windows\Temp or some other temporary location in the user profile's directory (it varies with Windows version and configuration, I'll let you the task to find the actual place). I don't really remember if I needed the help of the "unlocker" utility to have read access to the file, but that's possible.

On linux, while you have the flash open, you could use the following commands (YMMV: the "2" in "cut -f 2" may need adjustment):

Code:

# To list the relevant "deleted but opened" files:
find /proc/$(pidof plugin-container | cut -f 2 -d ' ')/fd/ -lname '/tmp/*'

# To play them on your player of choice instead of on those brain-dead, cpu-hogger flash players:
find /proc/$(pidof plugin-container | cut -f 2 -d ' ')/fd/ -lname '/tmp/*' -exec mplayer -fs '{}' '+'

# To copy them to your home directory:
find /proc/$(pidof plugin-container | cut -f 2 -d ' ')/fd/ -lname '/tmp/*' -exec cp '{}' ~/ ';'

Hope this helps

If you guys are using IDM (known as internet download manager), it will automatically grab the links upon clicking the animation and the popup will tell if you want to download it or not, i'm also using it on youtube, and other sites as well. It is paid but you can easily get one by other means on the internet.

Tae Kim's is great and in level terms will probably take you up to around N3 (+ a little bit of N1/2) for grammar.
After Tae Kim's, just look for grammar at higher levels. So on Anki I use:

- "スパー合格　JLPT1+2 Grammar"
- "完全マスター　１級文法問題対策　例文"
- "Gengo Grammar Alt".

All 3 are searchable decks on anki. They cover N1+N2 level grammar.

Beyond N1, just cover grammar as you see it (there will no doubt be some not covered by JLPT).

In general I don't like the JLPT system and don't think it's a worthwhile use of time/money unless you need it for a resume/uni application, but it is a good guide to knowing what you should study for grammar. Like a list of things to tick off.

Tae Kim's guide might be great, but it's a little misleading to suggest it might take someone up to the N3 level. There is a lot of basic information which it skims lightly or simply doesn't cover. If someone where to use it as a key source for learning grammar, they would be cutting themselves short without supplementing it with a decent amount of reading up on certain patterns online, or by giving something really well suited to beginners, such as Japanese the Manga Way, a good reading through.