Hey all, sorry if this post isn't in the right section/has been posted a million times before, but here goes.

I am completely new to learning Japanese. I have no real previous experience other than playing Japanese Rhythm Games and watching the odd subtitled anim?. I've recently decided to start learning Japanese seriously, as I find the language interesting and it seems like it would be fun to learn.

I'm a bit confused as to where to begin though. I've gone ahead and bought myself the Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary, and RTK1 arrived today. I'm also waiting on the Kanji Poster. I want to know what things I should go about learning first and if there is some kind of order I should go about learning them. Say, for example, starting with grammar, then working on vocabulary, or pronunciation and listening comprehension etc.

Should I just jump straight into RTK alongside learning the basics, or should I hold it off until I know more?

Also, for self-study, the best places to go in order to learn these things?

I know that AJATT tells me to just outright immerse myself, but I feel that getting rid of all of my music, films books etc. right now would be a bit too much for me, especially since I don't even know the basics.

I hope I'm conveying my problem properly here. Any help is much appreciated.

The only order is that you must follow is to finish RTK before trying to read, or you'll get frustrated easily. You should devote all you time in the beggining to RTK.
Some people do it under a month. Some people take 3 months. Some take 1 year.

What people here in this forum are doing:

1) Finish RTK.
2) Start mining sentences with the aid of an SRS.

When people are doing 1 they think that immersion is too soon.
When people are doing 2 they think that they should've started immersion sooner.

Both are fine, you'll be much better than if you were doing classes.

Warning:
*** Subtitled anime doesn't count as study time, nor immersion ***

The begginer books people of this forum like are:
1) Understanding basic japanese grammar
2) All about particles
And later:
3) Kanji Odyssey

** Notice that after finishing these books you will be already be considered an "advanced" student in most classes. **

Dictionaries people here like:
1) Yahoo japan dictionary: Great source of sentences.
2) Sanseido: Concise definitions for when you are going monolingual.

I guess this covers most pitfals.

mentat_kgs Wrote:** Notice that after finishing these books you will be already be considered an "advanced" student in most classes. **

By what standards is THAT true?

Anyway, basically what he said. The very first thing you should do is learn the Kana, as they're utterly valuable and very easy (at least as a time investment) to learn. Dispense with the romaji utterly. Afterwards, as the list of books Mentat suggested implies, grammar is really the most important. You'll be picking up vocabulary along the way, but concerted vocabulary study really doesn't accomplish much if you can't understand the sentences that the vocabulary appears in. Once you both have a steady foundation in (lower?)intermediate-ish grammar (causative, passive, all conditionals, blah blah), and an understanding of the kanji through RTK, you can pretty much jump into reading whatever and just absorbing vocabulary though there. This may mean something like Kanji Odyssey or just outright immersion ala AJATT, whatever suits your tastes.

A good online resource to grab the drift of the more essential grammar is Tae Kim's guide at http://www.guidetojapanese.org. I'd add that, personally, I don't see that All About Particles makes a lot of sense until you actually are some ways into Japanese already. Maybe this is self-evident, but I'd always been given the impression it was some kindof noobie-book and was surprised to find that it took off on the assumption you already knew what you were doing. I suppose it's more of a reference guide. I'd also recommend Making Sense of Japanese, but that, similarly, is only useful after you have little bit of experience under your belt, as it's main purpose is to clear up a few points that might have been left ambiguous through other study. For just starting off, do stick to Tae Kim's and presumably UBJG (I haven't actually used it, but everyone seems to say so).

The priority of RTK vs Actual Language study is kindof a personal question. Do whatever doesn't drive you insane. I studied most of my grammar before RTK, then went through RTK straight while almost completely halting my true Japanese study. When RTK was driving me crazy, though, I'd go back to studying Japanese for awhile. Then, once RTK was finished, I jumped wholesale into immersion and I'm enjoying the results.

For a complete beginner I recommend learning both Hiragana and Katakana first, this seems obvious to me, and only takes a day or 2. The best beginners books I can recommend are the Genki series, they start with Hiragana right away and don't baby you about with romaji. This is always a good sign. If you've never heard of these I suggest you check some reviews, they are extremely good for serious beginners who want to learn grammar and get a good foundation to build on. The scenarios aren't exactly the best but you can work around that easily enough.

I think it might be wise to actually attempt getting some ground work done before doing Heisig. I mean, what if you start learning how the language actually works and you decide it's not for you? That would be a lot of time spent on remembering Kanji that you will, most likely, no longer use. It's up to you of course. I enjoyed doing the Heisig book and it seriously beats any other method of memorizing all the Kanji. Take your time in the beginning and get a feel for what you enjoy.

Good luck!

QuackingShoe Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:** Notice that after finishing these books you will be already be considered an "advanced" student in most classes. **

By what standards is THAT true?

Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar teaches up to JLPT 3 level. Most classes won't get you that far until past 202 maybe. My 101 class doesn't even teach て form until near the end of class.

If you watch anime (or J-drama, for that matter), turn off the subtitles. You will understand a bit less at first, but you will grow used to the language faster, and may even pick up some vocabulary. Speaking from my own experience, however, anime mainly seems to teach me new ways of using vocabulary I already know.

I'd ignore textbooks like genki. Genki's preface is great, but the book has more english than japanese and it is very, very basic. Even in the end of lvl 2 it is basic. Also it takes too long to use kanji, wich you need to you after RTK so you wont forget them.

Like Quacking noticed, All about particles is harder than UBJG. But you should do it as soon as you can. The book is very short. I guess the whole book does not have 300 sentences and it convers the usage of most of japanese particles.

UBJG and AAP have the goal of covering japanese grammar, letting you free to do the rest yourself.

For last, sadly, what I said is true. That's how bad classes are. You should not compare you proficience with such low standarts.

alyks Wrote:

QuackingShoe Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:** Notice that after finishing these books you will be already be considered an "advanced" student in most classes. **

By what standards is THAT true?

Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar teaches up to JLPT 3 level. Most classes won't get you that far until past 202 maybe. My 101 class doesn't even teach て form until near the end of class.

Odd. In my classes in Japan, JLPT3 was considered the end of the beginner course. JLPT2 was the end of intermediate. So finishing a book in basic grammar would hardly make you advanced by any measure.

If you mean just normal college courses, then yes, I agree.

I've been studying japanese for 2 years including a month in Japan itself, and I'm just now getting to where I can understand about 100% of an unsubbed anime, at least when they're not talking about anything too technical. But damn, does that feel good

How I would recommend going about:

While it's a very good idea in theory and some people can do it, doing RTK before starting your japanese studies is hard and kind of boring since you won't have the motivation. So while I wouldn't ask of you to do it, I really recommend focusing mainly on RTK until you're finished with it, THEN focus on learning vocabulary and grammar.

However, first things first: Learn hiragana and katakana. While you could start learning some japanese using latin characters, do yourself a favor and don't. Learning hiragana and katakana is easy, you can do it in a week if you want. thejapanesepage.com has a good section on learning the kana, finish that before doing anything else.

When you're done with kana, start using RTK and this site. Since you're a beginner, I recommend doing like... 10 kanji a day at most. When you feel you got the hang of it, start doing more each day if you can. At the same time, you can start using some basic books to learn how japanese works. Learn basic sentences like "this car is red" and "where is the train station?". Stuff like this can be learnt at thejapanesepage.com and at guidetojapanese.com. If you're into buying books, Minna no Nihongo is awesome for learning Japanese but the books are somewhat expensive.

When you finish RtK you can start doing the sentence method which most people at this forum seems to prefer, basically just putting real japanese sentences (which you understand) into an SRS program like Anki.

[ファブリス]

QuackingShoe Wrote:The priority of RTK vs Actual Language study is kindof a personal question.

I agree with QuackingShoe. To go further I would say that if you have been drawn to the Japanese characters and you like writing them, go straight for RtK, and continue with basic grammar and vocab as time allows. Otherwise, learn basic grammar and vocabulary as a priority, so that when you begin RtK you can appreciate how it is helpful and be more motivated to complete it.

Thanks for all the helpful replies, guys.

So, here's my plan based on a mix of everyone's advice:

- Learn the Kana

- Go through Tae Kim's page.

- Start RTK at around 10/15 a day. Bump it up as I get used to Kanji.

- Buy and read through UBJG

Also, this may seem like a really silly question, but ... I just read through the intro for RTK and it seems that it doesn't give the spelling for each Kanji in Japanese. It only has what each means in English. I'm guessing it's up to me to find out their Japanese spelling myself?

Another question: How much time should I spend on each Kanji character? For example, should I write out each new character a certain number of times before moving to the next?

Seems like I got a LOT of work to do, but I expected that anyway.

The important thing to focus on in RTK is the story, not how well you write the character - you will get plenty of practice writing each primitive, so there's no need to write each kanji over and over again. I always write the kanji once, carefully, when I first learn it, then once every time I review it. Because of the repetition of the primitives, your kanji writing will improve very quickly that way.

As far as time - spend enough time with each kanji such that the story gets 'stuck' in your head, whether through vivid imagery or a catchy phrase (there are plenty of threads about which is better, but do what works for you, as any bad stories will be self-correcting as you will need to revise them as you review.

Hey Manly,

Just thought that maybe if you give us your reason/motivation for learning Japanese, that might help us help you.

The plan you've got sounds solid. I'd second the recommendation for "Minna No Nihongo".

Ji_suss Wrote:Hey Manly,

Just thought that maybe if you give us your reason/motivation for learning Japanese, that might help us help you.

The plan you've got sounds solid. I'd second the recommendation for "Minna No Nihongo".

Okay, here's a little list of what comes to mind:

1) I'd love to be able to speak/read/write another language (although I can, kind of, because I live in Wales, but I don't like the Welsh language, being honest).

2) I listen to a lot of Japanese music, play a lot of Japanese games and recently enjoy watching J-drama, so I'd love to be able to understand the lyrics to the songs etc. I'd also love to be able to read manga in its original form so that I can interpret the dialogue for myself, rather than relying on someone else's translations. Same goes for when I watch anime and drama/play games.

3) I like how the language itself sounds. I don't know if you get what I mean, but, to me, it has a nice flow to it.

4) I'd love to be able to visit Japan. It's a beautiful country with an interesting and rich culture; sounds like a blurb on the back of a tourist handbook, but it's true. Not sure I'd want to move there (as if I could afford it anyway), but being able to visit and converse with people/get around without a tourist's translation book would be enjoyable.

Uh ... well, generally I'm just interested in a lot of Japanese things and I really want to learn another language, so it only makes sense to go for one that you generally spend a lot of time with. Hope that helps.

I'll definitely add Minna no Nihongo to my list of books to buy.

10/15 kanji is too little. If you have the time, try adding 30-50. You need to add 30/day to finish it under 3 months.

* Minna no nihongo is a book for a classroom setting. If you are doing self study, after RTK, it worthless.

ManlyTears Wrote:Also, this may seem like a really silly question, but ... I just read through the intro for RTK and it seems that it doesn't give the spelling for each Kanji in Japanese. It only has what each means in English. I'm guessing it's up to me to find out their Japanese spelling myself?

RTK 1 is intended to teach you only how to write and remember the kanji. The idea is that you first acquire the characters (2042 of them) and after that you start assigning readings to each of them. This sounds unnatural and even pointless for some people, but I would advise you not to listen too much to them. For lots of people (as I can see at this forum), the more they progress at their Japanese studies, the more they agree with the method used by RTK.

As for the keywords used by RTK, you have to keep in your mind that they are keywords rather than meanings. Of course, most times those keywords will coincide or at least be related to a real meaning of the kanji, but sometimes that won't happen. It isn't necessarily that the book is teaching you a wrong meaning, it is just that the objective of some keywords is not teaching you the real meaning of the kanji, but instead they are memory aids for remembering the shape of it.

頑張れ！

mentat_kgs Wrote:10/15 kanji is too little. If you have the time, try adding 30-50. You need to add 30/day to finish it under 3 months.

The amount of kanji you learn each day is something only you can set. For some people, 100 is perfect, while for others, 25 can be too much. Probably it would be better to limit how much time you spend daily instead of a daily quota of kanji to learn.

Quote:* Minna no nihongo is a book for a classroom setting. If you are doing self study, after RTK, it worthless.

Again, that depends on your personal tastes. Nevertheless, I would advise you to check Tae Kim's grammar guide before buying anything.

Transtic, it is not a matter of personal taste.

It is a matter of _strategy_.

RTK is good when it is done quick.
The optimal is 1 month. But doing it in 1 month is really hard.
But one should know it is doable and that many have done it.

Minna no Nihongo doesnt get along well with RTK.

It is a question of using your strenghts to fight back your weaknesses. After doing RTK your strenght will be kanji, and you'll be weak in japanese.

You'll need kanji heavy sentences to help you learn japanese better.

Heisig himself states in the book that he thinks that RTK will fail miserably in a classroom setting. That is because books like Minna no Nihongo take a very long time to teach you few kanji. You need to put your kanjis to use in order to not forget them.

1) Who says you have to do RTK quickly? Where does it say that one month is optimal? I feel everyone has to find his or her own pace.

2) Nobody is suggesting Minna as a way to reinforce kanji. I'm sure that after finishing RTK, Manlytears can work through some lightly-kanjied language textbooks, (such as Minna no Nihongo), to learn grammar, etc AND read heavily kanji-laden manga, readers, etc at the same time.

Manly, don't let AJATT dictate what you should do. It's highly effective for many people, but it's just one path...

Ji_suss Wrote:Manly, don't let AJATT dictate what you should do. It's highly effective for many people, but it's just one path...

This kind of thing drives me nuts. If it's highly effective for some people, it's highly effective for everybody. The only difference is that people either
a, want immediate benefits over long term benefits
b, don't want to put in the time and effort
or c, think they can't do it because they're not doing it perfectly the first time.

It's not the only way to learn Japanese, but it is the most effective way we've found so far outside of Japan.

Aside from, for example, talking to japanese people and whatnot.

Erubey Wrote:Aside from, for example, talking to japanese people and whatnot.

Which is sort of a moot point, since that would be lumped into AJATT anyway.

I would strongly recommend avoiding minna no nihongo. It's philosophy is to teach all the different ways a point of grammar can take as seperate points, rather than teach the underlying principle that binds them together. So you don't fully understand the grammar, you are just given lots of different cases of when to use it. Very hard to remember. I was really suprised after using it and then looking at the grammar points in a Dictionary of Basic Grammar, that all the splintered cases they had were simply presented in one section with the underlying meaning explained.

It also fails to teach the difference between は and が.

One book I would definitely get it "Making Sense of Japanese" by Jay Rubin. He explains all the grammar points that are difficult for English speakers to comprehend. You want to have basic grammar down before you read it though.

Oh and my advice is use Anki for reviewing RTK1 rather than this site.

thermal Wrote:I would strongly recommend avoiding minna no nihongo. It's philosophy is to teach all the different ways a point of grammar can take as seperate points, rather than teach the underlying principle that binds them together. So you don't fully understand the grammar, you are just given lots of different cases of when to use it. Very hard to remember. I was really suprised after using it and then looking at the grammar points in a Dictionary of Basic Grammar, that all the splintered cases they had were simply presented in one section with the underlying meaning explained.

It also fails to teach the difference between は and が.

One book I would definitely get it "Making Sense of Japanese" by Jay Rubin. He explains all the grammar points that are difficult for English speakers to comprehend. You want to have basic grammar down before you read it though.

Oh and my advice is use Anki for reviewing RTK1 rather than this site.

I don't really see how someone at this site (where AJATT is so prevalent) can say that Minna no Nihongos principle is bad. Just like the sentence method tells you to simply use grammar is many situations and then use it properly from that, Minno no Nihongo does it in the same way. Minna no Nihongo is purely in Japanese, you won't get much better immersion. The chapters all make sense, you learn functional and important japanese which sounds natural.

は and が is the same IMO, you don't need to study the difference, you understand it from just using it so much. At our school, we didn't start studying the real grammar of は and が until after Minna no Nihongo, but it didn't matter because everyone allready used it almost flawlessly. The big chapter on 自動詞 and 他動詞 brought up the most important points. From getting all the immersion and all the personal use of は and が in Minna no Nihongo, the student learns to "hear" the difference, "feel" it. Just like a japanese person.