What are your guy's opinions?
Is Tae Kim worth the time to study, or is it better for one to just jump right into sentences and just learn through immersion?

What, from RTK into sentences with no grammar study at all?

It's certainly worth the time to study something, whether that is Tae Kim, Genki, Japanese the Manga Way or whatever. While learning grammar rules has its limitations, it's a heck of a lot easier than trying to intuit grammar rules from reading a bunch of sentences. People that have done so anyway also often come away with some downright weird misconceptions about how Japanese works. It's really easy to see patterns that aren't there and come up with imaginary rules for yourself based on a coincidence or two.

Plus, y'know, there are sentences in Tae Kim and in every grammar book ever. You can add them to Anki if you like.

You definitely need a grammar guide of some kind so that you can even recognise grammar structures. For people who are self-studying I highly recommend Tae Kim because it's concise and detailed enough for you to refer back to it later.

If you're really itching to start reading, you can just start it and do Tae Kim on the side, but I really wouldn't recommend not going through a grammar guide at all. You can try doing what I did which was skip through all the explanations to the example sentences and conjugation rules at every cahpter to get through the whole thing as quickly as possible.

I think it makes all the sense in the world to get a basic foundation in grammar. If you like to be independent, you can simultaneously study vocab, do listening activities, etc.

Typical language textbooks are designed with instructor manuals but you certainly can study them on your own, there will just be some gaps. Genki is well written and focused on the Western learner. I didn't particularly like Japanese for Busy People but it has a lot of good sentences. If you want something at an accelerated pace, in a text without any English, you could try Minna no Nihongo; there are some English explanations in a supplementary book.

I think Tae Kim's guide is quite a useful supplementary reference; there is even a free app you can bring around on your phone. But textbooks have exercises, incremental kanji, incremental vocab, lots of sentences, reading, etc. Where Japanese is so difficult and so different from western languages, I believe a good introductory textbook can get you off on the right foot.

I recommend it, as Tae Kim himself said, it'll give you a solid base for basic Japanese grammar. I'm currently working through DoIJG and I can say Tae Kim really helped me give me a better perspective of a lot of basic and intermediate concepts.
I also used the TK deck along with it, I formatted it for Recog and Prod and I made it compatible with morphman.

I think it would be worth quickly going through Tae Kim (you don't have to understand all of it completely now, especially the later stuff) before you go sentencing hunting for yourself. That's what I did anyway. You can still do some immersion (I'm thinking audio, videos...) while you're going through TK as well.

I hope I don't derail the thread, but how about doing Imabi instead? I'm following the textbook route, and maybe I can start parallel study with a grammar guide after IATIJ.

I did the JALUP beginner deck, which explains a lot of grammar, then mined some of the examples sentences from tae kim and I found it to be super useful to me. I ended up making about 300 cards from tae kim. I don't think it's completely necessary if you start with a sentence source that has translations of the sentences (core deck, or mining from a beginner's book like Japanese the Manga Way) but between the two decks, it definitely helped clear up some things I was glossing over and then not understanding when I'd encounter it in native materials or the JALUP intermediate deck.

(2016-04-16, 11:14 am)Meriden Wrote: I hope I don't derail the thread, but how about doing Imabi instead? I'm following the textbook route, and maybe I can start parallel study with a grammar guide after IATIJ.

Are you saying that you intend to do nothing but read textbooks? This is a really bad idea.

From Tae Kim:

Quote:Despite what many are led to believe, learning Japanese is not significantly more difficult than learning any other language. The truth is mastering any foreign language is quite an endeavor. If you think about it, you are essentially taking everything you've learned in life and re-learning it in a completely different way. Obviously, no single book can really claim to teach you everything about a language including all the vocabulary a fluent adult commonly obtains during her life. So what do I mean by a complete guide to Japanese?

Most Japanese textbooks only go over a small subset of what you need to learn Japanese, typically covering a certain amount of grammar and vocabulary with a smattering of dialogues and readings. However, mastering a language requires much more than just learning grammar and vocabulary. What most Japanese textbooks fail to recognize is that they can't possibly hope to cover all the necessary vocabulary and kanji (Chinese characters) to obtain full fluency. This guide fully recognizes that it cannot teach you everything word by word and character by character. Instead, it will give you a solid understanding of the fundamentals with a wide collection of dialogues and examples. In addition, it will go over various techniques and tools to enable you to teach yourself. Essentially, this book is a guide on how you can learn Japanese to complete fluency by actually using Japanese in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Please try not to have any misconceptions that there is a "reading route" and "flashcard route" and "textbook route" or whatever. One should incorporate elements from different material in order to have maximum exposure and get the best of both worlds.

As for whether Imabi is good or not, I'm not clear on this because the only grammar guide I've used is Tae Kim, but when it comes to grammar guides (I assume Imabi is one), all paths lead to the summit, after which you would -- should! -- start consuming books and stuff.

if you can't be bothered to read this post, I implore you to watch this video at the very least.

(2016-04-16, 12:10 pm)risu_ Wrote:

(2016-04-16, 11:14 am)Meriden Wrote: I hope I don't derail the thread, but how about doing Imabi instead? I'm following the textbook route, and maybe I can start parallel study with a grammar guide after IATIJ.

Are you saying that you intend to do nothing but read textbooks? This is a really bad idea.

No, I'm also doing the Core10k. I've also started with a few beginners' graded readers (with translation, grammar explanation, and audio).
The point is, I was wondering if, in addition what I'm doing, reading (not study, nor anki, etc.) Tae Kim's grammar would give me a true boost to my japanese. Also, about how long does it take to finish it?
Edit: or whatever other source instead of Tae Kim.
Occasionally, I watch a j drama series. Although it's not very good at this point to improve Japanese, I still believe it's a 5-10% effective. And it's something I enjoy doing.

Tae Kim is pretty short and concise. You should be able to finish it pretty fast at 1-2 chapters per day.

Anyone knows where to get Tae Kim anki deck - newest version?
I thought about going through the guide as well, but I thought it's going to be more convenient doing it through Anki.

You mean this one?

There is a warning in the review:

Quote:Very nice deck, but...

...there are no diagrams for sentences other than the first. Example: "アリスは学生？／うん、トムも学生。" will have a diagram for the question, but not for the answer. In this case, the grammar point in question is in the answer, which makes the diagrams incomplete.

Apparently the only difference is the sentence diagrams and even that is minimal based on the comment. You might well just use the other deck.

EDIT: Nvm, I just downloaded the deck and there are diagrams to more than 1 card now. The problem seems to have been fixed since that comment.

Tae Kim\s Grammar with *Useful* Sentence Diagrams Wrote:てことは、みきちゃんは、 今[こん] 彼氏[かれし]がいないてこと？

Seems it would still benefit from a bit of proofreading.

lol I just noticed that. Also, I have no clue how the diagrams works.

Japanese sentence structures are a big departure from European languages. So, while I wouldn't normally bother with any kind of grammar, I think a basic one could be useful, to get you started with some of the common particles and basic structures. But not too much. It should be just to give you a feel for how Japanese works.

Tae Kim's Basic Grammar should be enough, to get you started. You can read the explanations, but only if you understand them easily (they get technical at times, and if you don't know a technical term in English, learning it won't help you learn Japanese, so don't bother).

But the more important thing is to learn what the example sentences mean. There are ready made Anki decks with those sentences in them.

(2016-04-16, 12:29 am)risu_ Wrote: You definitely need a grammar guide of some kind so that you can even recognise grammar structures.

I think that's an unfounded statement. Plus, I know it's wrong, because I learned several languages without a grammar guide of any kind.

(2016-04-24, 2:32 am)Stansfield123 Wrote:

(2016-04-16, 12:29 am)risu_ Wrote: You definitely need a grammar guide of some kind so that you can even recognise grammar structures.

I think that's an unfounded statement. Plus, I know it's wrong, because I learned several languages without a grammar guide of any kind.

I don't know German, but I could read Kafka right now if I wanted to while using a dictionary to look up every single word. Going through a grammar guide prior to doing anything helps make the process significantly easier.

Here's a more colloquial way of looking at it: Instead of taking it in raw and ending up bleeding and sore, why not lube it up first? 

Also, the entire thread is talking about learning Japanese, not other languages where you may or may not need a grammar guide. And the answer to "Should I use Tae Kim as a beginner to Japanese?" is in every case a resounding yes.

(2016-04-24, 8:17 am)risu_ Wrote: I don't know German, but I could read Kafka right now if I wanted to while using a dictionary to look up every single word. Going through a grammar guide prior to doing anything helps make the process significantly easier.

Here's a more colloquial way of looking at it: Instead of taking it in raw and ending up bleeding and sore, why not lube it up first? 

Also, the entire thread is talking about learning Japanese, not other languages where you may or may not need a grammar guide. And the answer to "Should I use Tae Kim as a beginner to Japanese?" is in every case a resounding yes.

I agree that it's a good idea to use Tae Kim. I just don't agree that it (or using a grammar guide in general) is "necessary". You can do without just fine. That's the part that is unfounded. Useful, sure...actually, I'm not sure sure (it's not a scientifically proven fact), but I think it's useful. But necessary: absolutely not.

As for your Kafka example, the grammar guide really wouldn't help you read Kafka in German. The dictionary wouldn't be much help either (words have more than one meaning, and, even in the off chance that a dictionary was able to list all of them, it still wouldn't tell you which one to pick when), but the grammar guide would be even less useful.

That's not how natural languages work. They're not logical, top down systems built on a grammatical skeleton. You can't really deduce the meanings of most sentences and expressions from a set of rules, the way you could for a programming language or other kinds of artificial languages. In language learning, you're mostly working from the bottom up (going through lots and lots of different sentences, until hopefully some patterns emerge...sometimes they do, other times they don't), not from the top down.

I think that its definitely worth using a concise guide like Tae Kim to learn grammar. A long-winded excercise and comprehension heavy textbook like Genki is a bit of a time sink that's unnecessary, but I think going through Tae Kim quickly will definitely give you a boost in your sentence stage. Sentence purists will say to skip grammar learning, but I think its definitely useful to have a basic concept of such things before encountering them. Not essential, but absolutely useful and its sure to make the process smoother.

It should be noted that Tae Kim is quite short and won't take that much time to go through.  Tae Kim Basic is maybe 300 cards which go much faster than the same number of kanji or vocabulary cards.  After going through Tae Kim basic, you will understand some frequently used grammar patterns that would take much longer to puzzle out and certainly much less time than going through a full textbook.  I am skeptical about the value of too much grammar study, but Tae Kim is so straight to the point it is a no-brainer.  After you do basic, you'll have a better idea how much more time you want to devote to grammar study.

Btw, I know this has been answered many times, and I've also looked on google, but since I read disparate opinions, I would like to ask it here.
What levels does Tae Kim's grammar cover? N4 or N3? Is it equivalent to Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese or lower?

(2016-04-26, 7:55 am)Meriden Wrote: Btw, I know this has been answered many times, and I've also looked on google, but since I read disparate opinions, I would like to ask it here.
What levels does Tae Kim's grammar cover? N4 or N3? Is it equivalent to Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese or lower?

That really depends on what you mean by 'grammar'. Tae Kim covers all of the structural grammar - conjugations, particles, when word order does and doesn't matter, all that stuff. In that sense I would say that Tae Kim covers all the grammar that exists in modern Japanese, including antiquated expressions that still see some situational modern use.

On the other hand, there are a lot of words that have strong impacts on the meaning of a sentence that Tae Kim doesn't cover. Whether that's really 'grammar' or 'vocabulary' is a matter of perspective, and that's why it's so hard for people to agree on how much of the JLPT Tae Kim covers.

You'll certainly need to learn a lot of expressions that aren't in Tae Kim, whether you consider that grammar or vocabulary learning is up to you.