So I'm working through Genki I right now as well as RtK. I was doing one of the writing exercises for Ch6, which asks questions about messages on a bulletin board. One of the flyers advertises a ハロウイーン パーテイー. For the briefest moment, I thought I was looking at an advertisement for a "Heroin Party."

At this point I thought I should practice my reading Katakana, so I don't mix "Halloween" up with "heroin" anymore.

HAHAH! I did the same thing! I have to take Japanese classes for my major, and we use Genki, and I swear, I did the same thing Everybody always says Robaato-san's a stoner, anyway

You can manage to do Genki and RTK at the same time? Don't you get confused? I think I'll do that too. I was in genki's lesson 10 when I started RTK and then stopped full time until I finish RTK. But I think I'll restart Genki.

There's so few kanji used in Genki that it's hardly going to confuse you.

I'll just remind you that you can also throw Genki away and start listening to Japanese audio 24hs/day.
I believe it is far more effective and much more fun. Of course you have to see it for yourself, some people dislike my choice.

Just don't let Genki distract you from RTK. RTK is real gold. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you start seeing results.

CarolinaCG Wrote:You can manage to do Genki and RTK at the same time? Don't you get confused? I think I'll do that too. I was in genki's lesson 10 when I started RTK and then stopped full time until I finish RTK. But I think I'll restart Genki.

Well, I don't really study Genki anymore than I need to pass the class with an A. I don't get particularly confused, but now that summer is here, I can really focus on RtK and it *is* going a lot faster. Personally, I plan to just sentence mine Genki 1 and 2, and maybe try to also add in vocab within example sentences, just so I have an easy time with the class materials, but if I weren't taking the class, I wouldn't waste my time with the book. It goes so slowly.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'll just remind you that you can also throw Genki away and start listening to Japanese audio 24hs/day.
I believe it is far more effective and much more fun. Of course you have to see it for yourself, some people dislike my choice.

Just don't let Genki distract you from RTK. RTK is real gold. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you start seeing results.

Yeah... that too

Well said. I just have a giant loop of every anime and drama I have playing in VLC. If possible, I never spend a moment without Japanese audio. It's amazing how beneficial it is... even when just listening passively.

I kind of agree about Genki, textbooks are very slow. You will learn all of Genki content and more in a few months after finishing RTK and starting sentence mining.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'll just remind you that you can also throw Genki away and start listening to Japanese audio 24hs/day.
I believe it is far more effective and much more fun. Of course you have to see it for yourself, some people dislike my choice.

Just don't let Genki distract you from RTK. RTK is real gold. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you start seeing results.

I think your heart is in the right place, but you're giving bad advice. Genki and other beginner level textbooks are good at introducing you to all the basic grammar. Without it, a person is going to be very confused by passive and causative verb conjugations. I think people give beginner level textbooks too much credit, but they're still useful. You just have to know when to stop using them.

Surely Tae Kim (and the internet in general) makes Genki obsolete?

I'm giving the advice that worked for me and a few more other people.

I know Genki has been in circulation for ages, but I believe Tae Kim's guide replaces Genki perfectly well.

But from my experience, grammar instruction is secondary, paling to actual usage of the language.

100 hours of listening is not only far more effective than 100 hours of Genki. It is also way more interesting.

Another thing about listening is that depending or your career it is easy to reach 8hs of listening each day, with little effort. All you need is a mp3 player and interesting content.

Building listening skills is something that takes forever. The sooner you start it, the sooner you'll understand Japanese speech.

Listening builds your memory for the sounds of the language. When you do sentences later, it will be easier for you to remember the readings, as the sounds will already have places on your mind. More or less like Heisig's primitives, sounds work as primitives for vocabulary.

erlog Wrote:Without it, a person is going to be very confused by passive and causative verb conjugations. I think people give beginner level textbooks too much credit, but they're still useful. You just have to know when to stop using them.

This. I completely disagree with just going out and mining sentences. You have to have *some* backbone. Or at least something to refer to. As adults, we don't learn "through osmosis" so much anymore.
Khatz may say that there's "no such thing as grammar," but as a beginner, you're way better off reading something that tells you why you go from 食べる to 食べて, and why it's　起こって instead of 起こて. Or why you even to go て to begin with, for that matter.

mentat_kgs Wrote:100 hours of listening is not only far more effective than 100 hours of Genki. It is also way more interesting.

That's definitely speculation on your part, and probably bad speculation at that. A beginner who is so new to the language that they are working with Genki won't learn anything from 100 hours of listening to incomprehensible Japanese.

I agree that 100 hours of listening is great, it will help a lot with listening, pronunciation and getting used to the language, but 100 hours of proper structured textbook study teaches you a TON. In 100 hours, you can complete all of Tae Kims guide and that leaves you with more than enough knowledge to pass JLPT3, grammar-wise. 100 hours of listening won't even get you close.

You are right. It is speculation. But I think it is good speculation.
But you are wrong when you say a beginner won't learn a lot from these 100 hours. I did and I believe anyone can do it too.

I started with Pimsleur. I did the first ~15 days of Pimsleur 30mins/day. Then I got to know Japanese Pod. I listened to it 2-3hs/day, for more ~15 days.

I don't really regret doing Pimsleur, but I think Japanese Pod was much much better.
Now I think Pimsleur should be completely ignored. But I still think that Natsuko's storytelling is awesome! I definitely recommend it.

But the big boom of my Japanese was from listening real audio. In 3 months, doing ~8h/day I came from listening brbrbrbrbrbrbr to sometimes understanding full sentences.

I feel the impact of audio on remembering vocabulary even today.
If I listened to a word many times before, even if I had not understood it on these occasions, it is much, much easier to remember it during sentence mining.

Also, after you get used to audio, you start picking vocabulary just from listening. Then your vocabulary starts to grow at a pace of 30 words a day without much effort.

Tobberoth Wrote:A beginner who is so new to the language that they are working with Genki won't learn anything from 100 hours of listening to incomprehensible Japanese.

I don't know about that. Before I ever took a Japanese course, before I knew かな, I learned quite bit just just watching Death Note over and over again. If you listen to 100 hours, you're gonna hear the same word again... and again. When you hear it, look it up. Do this for every word you continue to hear and eventually, you're going to build a pretty solid foundation.

sethg Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'll just remind you that you can also throw Genki away and start listening to Japanese audio 24hs/day.
I believe it is far more effective and much more fun. Of course you have to see it for yourself, some people dislike my choice.

Just don't let Genki distract you from RTK. RTK is real gold. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you start seeing results.

Yeah... that too

Well said. I just have a giant loop of every anime and drama I have playing in VLC. If possible, I never spend a moment without Japanese audio. It's amazing how beneficial it is... even when just listening passively.

=D I have my ps3 (running linux) running a python script that chooses videos from my terabyte hardrive and shows them like a tv channel. So all I have to do is turn the tv on and I get Japanese input all the time =D

sethg Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:A beginner who is so new to the language that they are working with Genki won't learn anything from 100 hours of listening to incomprehensible Japanese.

I don't know about that. Before I ever took a Japanese course, before I knew かな, I learned quite bit just just watching Death Note over and over again. If you listen to 100 hours, you're gonna hear the same word again... and again. When you hear it, look it up. Do this for every word you continue to hear and eventually, you're going to build a pretty solid foundation.

I'm not saying you won't learn anything, but listen to yourself. "After hearing a word a thousand times, you will look it up and learn it". Yeah. How long will that take? Say... a hundred hours?

It's not effective, that's why textbooks etc were invented: It's much quicker. And don't bring up the baby example, babies listen to quite a lot more than 100 hours, and it takes them years to become good enough to read a basic textbook.

Wow, looks like my "Halloween/heroin party" sparked quite the debate! :-)

CarolinaCG Wrote:You can manage to do Genki and RTK at the same time? Don't you get confused?

I haven't had any problems with doing both simultaneously - I've been doing RtK for about 3 or 4 weeks and Genki for 7 weeks; I'm on ch 7 in Genki and frame 636 in RtK, so I don't think it's slowing me down. I put the pieces together as I go along, pairing up readings with the kanji as I see them in the vocabulary and encounter them in the writing section. Keep in mind that this is my 4th language, though (after English, Portuguese, and French), so I'm definitely not the norm. :-)

I chose Genki because that's what the introductory Japanese courses here at the university use, so I didn't really know much else. It's nice because I am introduced to new grammar concepts with plenty of examples, and I can beef up with a little bit of vocab while I learn the kanji. Plus, I can go through fairly quickly - at one chapter per week, I can finish both volumes in 6 months. (Besides, the relationship development and growing romance between the characters in the dialogue is quite intriguing.) I'll probably sentence-mine from other sources when I get to that point, though - I was thinking about using KO2001 for that and maybe some manga, though I'm open to suggestions. I'm pretty new at this.

Like I said, I'm definitely not the norm - the more languages you learn, the easier they get, so I'm not as likely to get mixed up as someone who's on their second language. If you guys have any pointers, though, I welcome them! :-)

bombpersons Wrote:I have my ps3 (running linux) running a python script that chooses videos from my terabyte hardrive and shows them like a tv channel. So all I have to do is turn the tv on and I get Japanese input all the time =D

As awesome as this first sentence sounds, surely this would lead to an insanely high electricity bill?

Well, I don't literally mean 1000 times, I was just trying to say "several times". I don't suppose there's anything wrong with it if textbooks work for you. If that's your learning style, then go for it. I just can't stand the slow pace and very specific vocabulary that you're subjected to when you use a textbook like Genki.

Asriel Wrote:why it's　起こって instead of 起こて.

This makes for an interesting question: why is it 起こって instead of 起こて? Saying that it's because 起こる is a godan verb doesn't count, because that's something that's been made up at a later time to make it fit into the grammar.

sethg Wrote:Well, I don't literally mean 1000 times, I was just trying to say "several times". I don't suppose there's anything wrong with it if textbooks work for you. If that's your learning style, then go for it. I just can't stand the slow pace and very specific vocabulary that you're subjected to when you use a textbook like Genki.

The pace is yours to set. One can easily do 5 chapters in Genki each day, I would hardly call that slow pace. That "specific vocabulary" is in general the most basic and useful vocabulary there is. The point of a text book isn't to teach you terminology for advanced studies, it's to give you the basic cornerstones needed to talk about almost anything as long as it's on a high enough level. That's why compounds are pretty rare in textbooks, compounds are usually a lot deeper and specialized than normal 和語.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'm giving the advice that worked for me and a few more other people.
I know Genki has been in circulation for ages, but I believe Tae Kim's guide replaces Genki perfectly well.
But from my experience, grammar instruction is secondary, paling to actual usage of the language.

That's why I said your heart was in the right place. What you're saying here is contradictory to what the post I responded to said. You said to drop Genki in favor of RTK. That's bad advice because as a beginner, a person does need some grammar study. Your second post, to replace Genki with Tae Kim, is much much better advice. I wasn't disagreeing with any sort of sentence or immersion method. I don't want to start a holy war. I was disagreeing with the flippant way in which you responded to the use of a beginner textbook. I realized you didn't mean quite what you said. I wanted you to clarify, and you did.

nac_est Wrote:

Asriel Wrote:why it's　起こって instead of 起こて.

This makes for an interesting question: why is it 起こって instead of 起こて? Saying that it's because 起こる is a godan verb doesn't count, because that's something that's been made up at a later time to make it fit into the grammar.

I don't really have any authority to answer this, but look at 起きる and 起こる. They become 起きて and 起こって respectively. 起きる, to me, looks like it comes from 起こる somehow... so maybe it has to do with "modified" verbs?

A complete guess, but hey... it *kind* of resembles sense if you squint.

nac_est Wrote:

Asriel Wrote:why it's　起こって instead of 起こて.

This makes for an interesting question: why is it 起こって instead of 起こて? Saying that it's because 起こる is a godan verb doesn't count, because that's something that's been made up at a later time to make it fit into the grammar.

Because the continuative form of 起こる (classically yodan, modern godan) is 起こり, with the conjunctive particle て attached to the end it becomes 起こりて. Due to predictable & regular sound changes (音便) it became 起こって in modern Japanese. There was no way it could have become 起こて.

起きる's continuative form is 起き (it already ends with an i vowel without a kana change) so it doesn't produce the environment in which 音便 occurs, and thus there is no loss of a mora (り) with a replacement by a geminate (っ). If it was the case that the continuative form was 起きり, then the te form would be 起きって. You would also get 起きります.

Just because you don't fully understand verb groups (and their conjugation) don't say that they "don't count". Grammar may be descriptive, but language naturally develops rules which humans then try to describe. You might as well complain that there is no reason for water to be みず and not GNQ2IH.