I am pushing through RTK [I just got the book yay!]
I was planning on taking a bit of time between RTK and RTKana before getting into the meat of the language via texts etc.
There is another language [French] I'd like to get a start on before tuning to Japanese. I figure the RTK won't interfere much as it is really more a different way of writing English Keywords.

My question is this.

If after I finish the RTK and spend a bit of time slamming it into my head would

1: Learning vocab, say a 2K deck or the 2K Japanesepod101 word list be doable in the absence of any grammar or other text work.
2: Would such efforts interfere with learning another European language.

I do have the time, no work, no life etc. Figure perhaps that learning words in a very different language with a different writing system won't interfere whereas going full core into two languages seems to be considered a bad idea.


On a semi related question, would learning vocab in say French be much more doable than Japanese or are there issues I do not know of that make it a very bad idea.

I guess I'd be a bit more comfortable having a small base of vocab before starting the texts.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I am more at the wondering stage here, I am not wedded to anything yet.

I figure if I can cram 2K Kanji into my head without context, I should be able to do a 2K deck if it is just words and no sentences and if there is audio, double plus so for French as... well Canadian eh.

But what do I know. Thus I ask.

Chances are that learning 2200 Kanji without their reading is probably easier than learning a 2k deck. That being said, it's not impossible by any means.

While learning French vocabs isn't hard in itself, the conjugation of words, as well as their pronunciation is much harder than Japanese.

I'd say go for it, and if it gets too hard just focus on one.

Dudeist Wrote:I am pushing through RTK [I just got the book yay!]
I was planning on taking a bit of time between RTK and RTKana before getting into the meat of the language via texts etc.
There is another language [French] I'd like to get a start on before tuning to Japanese. I figure the RTK won't interfere much as it is really more a different way of writing English Keywords.

My question is this.

If after I finish the RTK and spend a bit of time slamming it into my head would

1: Learning vocab, say a 2K deck or the 2K Japanesepod101 word list be doable in the absence of any grammar or other text work.
2: Would such efforts interfere with learning another European language.

I do have the time, no work, no life etc. Figure perhaps that learning words in a very different language with a different writing system won't interfere whereas going full core into two languages seems to be considered a bad idea.

On a semi related question, would learning vocab in say French be much more doable than Japanese or are there issues I do not know of that make it a very bad idea.

I guess I'd be a bit more comfortable having a small base of vocab before starting the texts.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I am more at the wondering stage here, I am not wedded to anything yet.

I figure if I can cram 2K Kanji into my head without context, I should be able to do a 2K deck if it is just words and no sentences and if there is audio, double plus so for French as... well Canadian eh.

But what do I know. Thus I ask.

I mean, ok. Learning the kanji the RTK way probably won't interfere with learning French. But why would you then want to try to learn two new languages at the same time? If you're a native English speaker learning French vocabulary will be much easier than learning Japanese vocabulary. But trying to do both at the same time will probably mean your progress will be very slow in both languages and your results will probably be far less good than if you focused on one at a time.

Learning vocabulary out of context is not ideal, especially if you're trying to do it with absolutely no knowledge of the language at all. The best way to learn vocabulary is in context, and to learn in context you need grammar.

I think the question you need to answer is why you want to learn this way and what you hope to accomplish in both French and Japanese. Then you can decide what approach to take.

I guess I should stick to the original plan.

RTK + English Grammar. I don't know what many of those weird grammar terms mean, I figure a review would be helpful in understanding grammar lessons in other languages. Especially when it comes to verbs. I mean perfective aspect... huh?

Then French+ RTK review and Kana until I am either satisfied with the French level or want to give it a toss.

Then Japanese + French Maintenance.

I do like having the second stage allowing me to get extra review time to really nail down those Kanji rather than jump right in from Kanji/Kana into Japanese.

I think overall it would be more efficient to get your Japanese to a self-sustaining level before working on another language. As in a level where you can read and have it ingrained in your head so you're not in a constant state of near forgetfulness. Then another language can be brought in if you want.

Two languages at once sounds crazy to me. The weaker language will be draining effort from the main one, and you will be more apt to forget it due to less focus on it.

Also, Japanese is more useful imo, as French has 40 million less native speakers. Sure, more people speak it or are learning it as a second language due to its popularity and former status as the lingua franca, but you must also consider that a lot of things that were in French have been (or easily can be) translated into English due to how easy it is to go from French to English. Google translate does such a better job on French than Japanese for example.

Just saying, Japanese opens up more things that would otherwise be obscured to an English speaker.

Yea, learning 2 languages at once sounds a bit crazy to me, but not impossible. Japanese is a beast of a language for an english speaker. Estimates from the state department put Japanese at about 4 times the amount of time necessary to learn French.

I haven't learned more than 1.5 languages including my native language, but from reading the accounts of polyglots, it's often suggested to ladder languages. So a suggestion would be to learn French first, and then use french to learn japanese. Like use french keywords for RTK instead of english ones.

more on topic:

Dudist Wrote:1: Learning vocab, say a 2K deck or the 2K Japanesepod101 word list be doable in the absence of any grammar or other text work.
2: Would such efforts interfere with learning another European language.

Sure it's doable. I did it. 2k is a good amount of vocab to learn without context because there isn't much context if you don't know a lot of vocabulary. Above 1k-2k, it's probably good to start adding sentences to learn new words in context, or at least get used to them in context.

As far as grammar, I don't think studying english grammar will help you much because Japanese grammar is different.

rainmaninjapan Wrote:I think overall it would be more efficient to get your Japanese to a self-sustaining level before working on another language. As in a level where you can read and have it ingrained in your head so you're not in a constant state of near forgetfulness. Then another language can be brought in if you want.

Two languages at once sounds crazy to me. The weaker language will be draining effort from the main one, and you will be more apt to forget it due to less focus on it.

Also, Japanese is more useful imo, as French has 40 million less native speakers. Sure, more people speak it or are learning it as a second language due to its popularity and former status as the lingua franca, but you must also consider that a lot of things that were in French have been (or easily can be) translated into English due to how easy it is to go from French to English. Google translate does such a better job on French than Japanese for example.

Just saying, Japanese opens up more things that would otherwise be obscured to an English speaker.

I should probably clear some things up before you all think I am completely bonkers.

I was considering 2 things.
1: Perhaps while going head first into the French perhaps tossing a bit of time to get a jump on Japanese by doing a bit of vocab. Something to add a bit of spice to the RTK reviews and a way to hammer in the Kanji further. Also I have a LOT of time so perhaps spreading out the love might not have been a bad idea. I got about 8 hours a day every day of the week with no claim on it. In no way was I considering actually learning both languages in their fullness at the same time. Learning 10 Japanese words a day and going through mature reviews on the RTK deck while learning French is not the same as diving into Genki and the Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar for several hours a day while learning French.

2: I was also toying with the idea of getting a head start on French vocab before starting in on French proper but I don't think I will now.


As for useful language.

France has about 60 million people. Toss in 1/3 of the Swiss and about 40 or 60% of Belgium, about 7 million in Quebec and another million in Canada outside of Quebec and you got about 70 million. Toss in the former colonies and those who know it as a second or third or forth language especially in Europe and you get a language that is much more useful than Japanese unless you are into the Anime, Manga or tentacle porn. Not that there is anything wrong with tentacle porn. Cthulhu needs love also. A language that opens up quite a bit of the Western Canon and can make travel in much of Europe at least a bit easier. If someone doesn't know English they might know French.

Toss in that as I've mentioned in another thread or 2 that my father knew nothing but French till around the age of 20 and being in his early 80s, well it is a resource that won't be around much longer.
Although everyone speaks English in my town, because 1/3 of the population are bilingual francophone French is rammed down our throats, can't even get a job at the public library with out it for example. Never mind that just 100 km away the English minority are discriminated against but hey... Anglo lives don't matter I guess.
Oh and I live 1 hour from Montreal. Not that driving around Quebec has ever been a problem before but there are millions of French and unilingual French within a few hours drive from here. I've met 2 people who know Japanese in my 45 years, I am not sure how well one knew it as I hardly spoke to her but the other guy was at his best an N3 by his estimates and his skills have eroded. Locally I'd get more use out of Tamil and Urdu at about 1% of the population and there is a sizeable Chinatown in Montreal. Some of those Tamil girls are hot IMHO.

So yeah. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather skip French and try Japanese. As someone who grew up in Quebec as an Anglo and having encountered a rather American style [What you don't speak American, what's wrong with you] type attitude from the French even in adulthood, lets just say if there wasn't the time pressure with the old man being ancient, I'd be jumping right into Japanese and after that was done doing just about anything but French.

But more useful? Non mon ami. It has it's good points, useful isn't really one of them. I think it was on this forum where someone who knew the language found that back in North America it is not much more than a party trick and others who say they stick with it more out of sunk cost.

I didn't meant to get off on a rant there. I just disagree with the useful comment as a general statement as opposed to specific situation such as tentacle porn or joining the Jet program etc where Japanese is very useful or if one is a Bollywood fanatic both French and Japanese would be useless compared to the otherwise mostly useless Hindi.

Quite frankly I think if everyone just stuck with the language of Shakespeare the world would be a better place. If Klingon was good enough for him it should be good enough for everyone.

yogert909 Wrote:As far as grammar, I don't think studying English grammar will help you much because Japanese grammar is different.

I am getting reacquainted with English grammar not to learn English Grammar but more to get myself used to the terminology used in discussing grammar and grammar points. It seems and I could be wrong that a lot of language texts are a bit sparse in explaining what they mean when discussing grammar, Hell there is even a book out there explaining English grammar for English students of French. I believe there is one for English students of Spanish.

Dudeist Wrote:

yogert909 Wrote:As far as grammar, I don't think studying English grammar will help you much because Japanese grammar is different.

I am getting reacquainted with English grammar not to learn English Grammar but more to get myself used to the terminology used in discussing grammar and grammar points. It seems and I could be wrong that a lot of language texts are a bit sparse in explaining what they mean when discussing grammar, Hell there is even a book out there explaining English grammar for English students of French. I believe there is one for English students of Spanish.

I'm still not sure that will help you as much as you'd like. I don't know most of the terminology either, but I do know English lacks an imperfective aspect while it is important in Japanese. Japanese conveys word function using particles, while english uses word order. Those are two major differences, but there are others. Wikipedia is good for understanding unknown grammar jargon tho.

I don't know much about it, but what you are trying to accomplish by studying english grammar, is said to be easy to learn from studying esperanto. Allegedly since esperanto is a constructed language designed to be easy and perfectly regular, you can pick it up in a month or so. The regularity is the part which allegedly makes the grammar part useful. There is some research that learning esperanto helps specifically with french enough that esperanto + french takes less time to learn than french alone. I'm no expert on this, but you may consider looking into it.

OP, this is the book you want:
http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-St...934034427/

I have the German version from a bunch of years back, and it was useful.

I'd set aside the Japanese for a while and concentrate on French, were I you. Bond with your dad while you can.

I tried doing two languages at the same time briefly with German and Japanese 4-5 years ago. I had to drop the German to keep my sanity. What would happen for me is that a sentence would start in German, and invariably end in Japanese. Or I would drop in a German word for a Japanese word. Das ist 全然駄目。 (Or should it be 'Es war 全然駄目?')

yogert909 Wrote:English lacks an imperfective aspect while it is important in Japanese.

Imperfective aspect? Are you trying to tell me that your Hovercraft is filled with eels? If so I am sorry.

Monty Python reference aside and to get serious again it is exactly that sort of thing I hope to get help with. I find most texts seem to assume learners know these things whereas when I see such explanations it makes me want to throw the book on the ground.

rich_f Wrote:OP, this is the book you want:
http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-St...934034427/

I have the German version from a bunch of years back, and it was useful.

I'd set aside the Japanese for a while and concentrate on French, were I you. Bond with your dad while you can.

I tried doing two languages at the same time briefly with German and Japanese 4-5 years ago. I had to drop the German to keep my sanity. What would happen for me is that a sentence would start in German, and invariably end in Japanese. Or I would drop in a German word for a Japanese word. Das ist 全然駄目。 (Or should it be 'Es war 全然駄目?')

A few days ago I picked up an earlier edition of just that book from the library. While checking Amazon for the past few months doing research on the best texts to use I came across it. Thankfully the local library has it along with forever fluent and 2 other short books. It does seem to be the perfect book [the grammar not the FF] for my needs and the fact that the book exists in so many editions seems to indicate that there is a need for that approach.

If only there was a path of texts in French like there is in Japanese with the Genkis and the D*JG books. Sadly I seem to be stuck with the teach yourself series. Even less of a fan of the other self taught systems and the other texts seem really geared to needing a teacher and none of them stand out in terms of fanboys.

Although not the same thing, when I do Irish accent impressions they often end up switching by the end to Jamaican. It's the only accent that tends to switch on me.

Dudeist Wrote:Although not the same thing, when I do Irish accent impressions they often end up switching by the end to Jamaican. It's the only accent that tends to switch on me.

I find that whenever someone tries to imitate a foreign accent, no matter what country the accent is supposed to be from, eventually they start sounding like Count Dracula.

These frequency dictionaries are useful. I have the Japanese one, it's a good checklist to make sure you know the basics:
http://www.amazon.com/Frequency-Dictiona...415775310/

The Schaum's Ouline of French Grammar should be pretty good, too. Their German Grammar outline is really useful. It's not as good as DOJG, but it should be good enough to start with:
http://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-Fr...071828982/

Textbooks are kind of a shot in the dark. I read a comment somewhere where someone said they liked Echo for French, but I have no clue if it's any good or not. It's a French monolingual textbook, graded in A1, A2, B1, B2 etc. that the EU uses to assign to language levels. (A1 is intro level.) Look for "Echo French" on Amazon. The actual reviews are kind of useless-- people all complaining about shipping or condition of the books.

I'd think just about anything is better than the Teach Yourself books, tho. Might try Wikibooks, too, to see if someone has written an open source French textbook.

EDIT: If you want to look for good monolingual French textbooks, look for "français langue étranger"
Here's a search on amazon.fr:
http://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?__...%A9tranger

There is no way I am using a monolingual book. Not for the first step. I think the Echo books are strongly meant for use with a teacher, maybe I am confusing it with another series.
I do agree with the Teach Yourself books. However I am not really a fan of the other self learning methods and everything else seems less suited. Seems a lot of French texts that are not part of multi language self learner series are unilingual and heavily dependent on teachers to fill in the gaps.

I have a 60's reprint of a 1939 edition of teach yourself Spanish. It seems to be pretty good. Seems the series has gone downhill a bit. Oh well, it can't be helped.

Hopefully the more structured stuff I learned almost 40 years ago might kick in. I am thinking of actually starting with the frenchpod101. I know it has it's weaknesses but it doesn't seem too bad. Hopefully that plus TY and their companion books will get me to the point where I can start using native material and more advanced material such as the Schaum's and those DELF DALF study guides.

I am on the fence wrt fpod101 for reasons I don't want to get into. It has it's pluses and minuses and my particular case I can jury rig some of the pluses with my own resources.

I've bookmarked Schaum's. Thanks