Occasionally, I come across flippant negative remarks about said guide in places like here and reddit.

I would like to know exactly what those criticisms are and whether they are valid or not.

Your question started by this thread? http://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/co...android_a/

I've always wondered too. The most people say is " It's too stylized " .

I have yet to read the comments on that thread, aside from the one I posted.

I feel like on its own you might need to supplement it with additional material.
I dunno, I've always seen FAR more positive remarks about it than negative.

I think I saw someone point out a mistake in it once, overall I haven't seen many bad things said about it though. It's one of the best free online resources out there that I know of.

For a free guide, it's pretty darn good. If there are any errors in it by now, they're well-hidden. It's been around for a long time by now. So other than "just not liking it," (which sounds stupid as I type it) I don't see any reasons to avoid it.

Is it perfect? No. No one source is perfect or all-encompassing, because otherwise it would be impossibly unwieldy. But for beginners through intermediate, it's not a bad choice, especially if you have no cash on you. Supplement it with something else to make sure you cover those gaps, that's all. I'd say the same thing about Genki, though. Genki has gaps, too.

Maybe some people object because he's not a professor, or he's not charging $100 a pop for it? Beats me. It's not like you need a Ph.D. to teach a foreign language, you just need to be good at explaining stuff.

According to Tae Kim's Amazon page, he was born in South Korea and immigrated to the USA in 1971. So where's the native Japanese background?

Is his knowledge of Japanese as good as that of a native speaker? For me to feel totally comfortable with a course/book, at least one of the contributors/authors should be a native Japanese speaker.

I saw a Modern Greek course advertised at the local university, and the teacher is a man with a German name, which put me off a bit. I thought, for a Modern Greek course, I'd have more confidence if his name were Zorba Popadopolis.

You seem to imply that to be a good teacher of a SL you need to be a native speaker of that language. Big mistake in reasoning, if you ask me.

Just because someone can speak, for example, Japanese doesn't mean that they are good at teaching Japanese. In fact, there is value to have someone from your own background to teach you this other language. This is because they are more likely to be able to explain to you things that you don't understand in the way that you will understand. After all, they had to go through the same hurdles as you are going through themselves.

This is not to say that you don't need any contact with a native speaker(s). You indeed do. But, again, not to the extend that you would refuse learning from a non-native speaker.

john555 Wrote:According to Tae Kim's Amazon page, he was born in South Korea and immigrated to the USA in 1971. So where's the native Japanese background?

Is his knowledge of Japanese as good as that of a native speaker? For me to feel totally comfortable with a course/book, at least one of the contributors/authors should be a native Japanese speaker.

I saw a Modern Greek course advertised at the local university, and the teacher is a man with a German name, which put me off a bit. I thought, for a Modern Greek course, I'd have more confidence if his name were Zorba Popadopolis.

Native speakers are not necessarily the best teachers of a foreign language. Especially for beginners, native speakers never learned their language. Natives are good for pronunciation, and telling you if a sentence sounds natural. But this whole, native speakers are the best teachers thing is a giant fallacy. For a beginner, up until say low intermediate, learning from someone who learned to fluency is better, as they know what it is like to learn the target language. As an example, compare the way kanji is taught by native Japanese speakers to how it is taught by non-native speakers.

Regarding Tae Kim? As an intro to Japanese grammar , it's fantastic. I believe at some point their were some small errors that have been long since corrected.

On this forum I don't think it's that people criticize the Tae Kim Grammar Guide, I think it's that some people think it's not the right resources for everyone. Personally I generally recommend people starting out by themselves to get Genki because I think Genki is better at easing students into a lot of the difficulties that beginners face. And then I'd recommend people use Tae Kim or DBJG or something if they are confused about something in Genki or their other studies.

As for Tae Kim, I think most everyone agrees that it's a good resource, and you sure can't beat the price.

My favorite approach to learning Japanese is the one I did in college, using the textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language. But that book seems very limited outside of a course, although the grammar descriptions are definitely worth reading.

I haven't used the Tae Kim grammar guide, so I can't comment on it specifically. But due to it being free, I think it might be hard to get solid opinions on it, as it might often just get recommended across the board exactly because it is free and a lot of people mostly want to use free resources.
Sometimes I'm really surprised that people are too parsimonious to buy a 20$ textbook and instead solely rely on free resources. If you're gonna spend countless of hours learning Japanese, that time investment dwarfs the costs for good resources anyways... so why not base your learning on the best resources - free or not?!

hyvel Wrote:Sometimes I'm really surprised that people are too parsimonious to buy a 20$ textbook and instead solely rely on free resources. If you're gonna spend countless of hours learning Japanese, that time investment dwarfs the costs for good resources anyways... so why not base your learning on the best resources - free or not?!

There are a lot of young learners (teens) of Japanese and I think many of them probably don't have the funds for good study material.

While I don't think its a reason that some people choose free over paid, there also a lot of people that are sporadic in their studying. So they'll start learning some and then just drop it, only to start again in 6 months to a year. I think for these people it is somewhat beneficial to use free resources.

hyvel Wrote:Sometimes I'm really surprised that people are too parsimonious to buy a 20$ textbook and instead solely rely on free resources. If you're gonna spend countless of hours learning Japanese, that time investment dwarfs the costs for good resources anyways... so why not base your learning on the best resources - free or not?!

Sounds good, as long as you know what are the "best resources".... which often if not always is the problem.

For free resources the risk is much lower. You "only" lose your time if the resource ends up being bad, as opposed to losing your time and money when a paid resource is crap.

Not to mention "bad" can be subjective, so even recommendations on websites like this will not guarantee a good investment.

john555 Wrote:According to Tae Kim's Amazon page, he was born in South Korea and immigrated to the USA in 1971. So where's the native Japanese background?

Is his knowledge of Japanese as good as that of a native speaker? For me to feel totally comfortable with a course/book, at least one of the contributors/authors should be a native Japanese speaker.

I saw a Modern Greek course advertised at the local university, and the teacher is a man with a German name, which put me off a bit. I thought, for a Modern Greek course, I'd have more confidence if his name were Zorba Popadopolis.

I teach Japanese at a university, and I'm not a native speaker. Non-native speakers have some advantages in teaching that natives don't -- both are good for different things.

I've heard good things about Imabi and was pretty impressed when I visited his site.
The "downside" is that it may be too much to digest for a beginner, but I would think that the amount of detail helps in the long run.

Kuzunoha13 Wrote:I've heard good things about Imabi and was pretty impressed when I visited his site.
The "downside" is that it may be too much to digest for a beginner, but I would think that the amount of detail helps in the long run.

Imabi? Did he fix all the Japanese and English errors that were in the first version of his site?
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=8542&page=1
I tend to hesitate recommending Imabi to people because of that thread, but if he has I guess I can start recommending it.

It seems OK from what I've seen -- I don't have time to go through the entire site, though. I think people have tended to jump to conclusions because he's young and arrogant (IIRC when he started that site he was still in high school). It may not be the greatest resource for beginners, and some of the content is not explained as clearly as it could be, but among free resources it's pretty good. It's greatly improved from when it was first posted on that thread you linked. For instance, the introduction kana/kanji part is nowhere near as complicated and jargon-y as it was in the first version.

Don't use Firefox to view it, though. The site uses HTML 5 ruby, which inexplicably isn't implemented in firefox yet, and the fallback tags aren't consistently applied.

john555 Wrote:According to Tae Kim's Amazon page, he was born in South Korea and immigrated to the USA in 1971. So where's the native Japanese background?

Is his knowledge of Japanese as good as that of a native speaker? For me to feel totally comfortable with a course/book, at least one of the contributors/authors should be a native Japanese speaker.

I saw a Modern Greek course advertised at the local university, and the teacher is a man with a German name, which put me off a bit. I thought, for a Modern Greek course, I'd have more confidence if his name were Zorba Popadopolis.

How silly of you.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Haters gonna hate

Dreamers gonna dream.

http://www.imabi.net/
The guy's has great potential, but he tends to be a learned moron sometimes, not to hurt his feelings in any way. He should read more in English, Bertrand Russell for instance, to really know what it means to be both good at someting and kind at the same time.

buonaparte Wrote:

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Haters gonna hate

Dreamers gonna dream.

http://www.imabi.net/
The guy's has great potential, but he tends to be a learned moron sometimes, not to hurt his feelings in any way. He should read more in English, Bertrand Russell for instance, to really know what it means to be both good at someting and kind at the same time.

Most of his "about me" page is a rant against the UT Japanese program and how awesome he is. I don't know the UT faculty but I have a hard time believing they hate him for his Japanese ability and are scornful of anyone who is too good at Japanese.

john555 Wrote:According to Tae Kim's Amazon page, he was born in South Korea and immigrated to the USA in 1971. So where's the native Japanese background?

Is his knowledge of Japanese as good as that of a native speaker? For me to feel totally comfortable with a course/book, at least one of the contributors/authors should be a native Japanese speaker.

I saw a Modern Greek course advertised at the local university, and the teacher is a man with a German name, which put me off a bit. I thought, for a Modern Greek course, I'd have more confidence if his name were Zorba Popadopolis.

Your name is john so we can assume you have nothing to say about about anything Japanese.

+1 for Tae Kim

yudantaiteki Wrote:

buonaparte Wrote:

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Haters gonna hate

Dreamers gonna dream.

http://www.imabi.net/
The guy's has great potential, but he tends to be a learned moron sometimes, not to hurt his feelings in any way. He should read more in English, Bertrand Russell for instance, to really know what it means to be both good at someting and kind at the same time.

Most of his "about me" page is a rant against the UT Japanese program and how awesome he is. I don't know the UT faculty but I have a hard time believing they hate him for his Japanese ability and are scornful of anyone who is too good at Japanese.

In all this time I never looked at his site. But that "About Me" is cringe worthy. Why put that on your site at all? Anyway, he should have just of transferred schools if things are as bad as he stated. I don't know why he would choose UT anyway. He had to investigate a place where someone with his advanced Japanese background would fit in. Maybe an ivy league school would have been better for languages (but I don't know his academic or financial situation).

I didn't use Tae Kim myself since it doesn't ease you into the instruction gradually enough. I used Genki I and II and then Tobira followed by Kanzen Master N2 and N1 workbooks.

PotbellyPig Wrote:In all this time I never looked at his site. But that "About Me" is cringe worthy. Why put that on your site at all?

I remember what it was like to be his age.

I wish those griping about Tae Kim and other free resources would expend less energy bloviating, and more energy offering to help pitch in and correct these startling deficiencies they've supposedly uncovered. Bitching is easy; contributing is hard.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:In all this time I never looked at his site. But that "About Me" is cringe worthy. Why put that on your site at all?

I remember what it was like to be his age.

That line made me think of this song:

yudantaiteki Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:In all this time I never looked at his site. But that "About Me" is cringe worthy. Why put that on your site at all?

I remember what it was like to be his age.

Isn't he a bit old to post something like that though? That's more 14 than college freshman.