Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide
is a free site that many people are fond of. After finishing my text (Japanese for Everyone) I decided to see what the rage was all about. I'm methodically going through the site, and re-enforcing my grammar, by reading only. I figure it's good to get explanations from more than one source. I'm probably about 1/3 of the way through, and spend 15 to 30 minutes a night.

While going through it, I've come across stuff I really like, and stuff I'm not too fond of. So I decided to make this thread, in hopes to have some good healthy discussion about all things Tae Kim.

Tae Kim Wrote:The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view.

I disagree with this. I believe that the explanations are from the point of view of a gaijin who has acheived advanced fluency in Japanese. I base that on several texts that I've seen that, although written primarily in English, were originated by native Japanese speakers. I think native Japanese are the ones who want to teach us polite form first, for example. I also think they avoid romaji in grammar explanations, which makes things more difficult in some instances.

Don't get me wrong - I like her organization, and the order she's teaches things in. I just don't like being told this is the way Japanese would teach it.

I've found Tae Kim's website most useful when I need a specific explanation that my brain couldn't solve on it's own.

leosmith Wrote:Don't get me wrong - I like her organization, and the order she's teaches things in. I just don't like being told this is the way Japanese would teach it.

I think Tae is a male.

I don't think Tae Kim claims to be teaching from a Japanese point of view, and I think in a lot of ways learning from the point of view of someone who has become fluent in Japanese can be better than learning from a native speaker. I assume all of us are learning Kanji from a gaijin.

I have to disagree with you on the use of romaji. To me romaji is just a crutch that holds back one's fluency with kana. I can't imagine a case where using romaji would benefit anyone who planned on learning the written language.

I'm trying to fiinish RTK1 before delving too deeply into actual Japanese, but at times I've grown impatient and have used Tae Kim's site as a source of example sentences to put into Twinkle for review. I don't believe that it's necessary (or even advisable) to study grammar rules per se in the early stages of language learning - better to learn the rules later to reinforce what is already known intuitively - but I've still found the site to be a useful source for a variety of Japanese sentences written with Kanji but without requiring too much knowledge of Kanji to get started. I don't really care whether it's written from a Japanese or other perspective - if it's written correctly in Japanese, I want to learn it!

I actually think it's better to learn from a non-native speaker who has become fluent.
Mostly because they had to go through many of the same battles that you will face.

uberstuber Wrote:I have to disagree with you on the use of romaji. To me romaji is just a crutch that holds back one's fluency with kana. I can't imagine a case where using romaji would benefit anyone who planned on learning the written language.

As far as I can see, leosmith was talking about using romaji for grammar explications, eg: verb conjugations. I think in that case it can be justified, since it's easier to see the link between

[miru - mireba] [kiku - kikeba]
than between
[見る - 見れば] [聞く - 聞けば]

In the first case, you just remove the -u and add -eba, while in the second one you have to take the last character's equivalent in the え row of the kana chart and add ば. Of course, that doesn't mean that you should only learn the romaji version of the verb, just that it can be useful to show how the conjugations work.

suffah Wrote:I think Tae is a male.

I think you're right. I based my original thought on google (most Tae's were female), but I just read an exercise where he says his boss calls him キム君.

uberstuber Wrote:I don't think Tae Kim claims to be teaching from a Japanese point of view

Tae Kim Wrote:The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view.

How do you interpret the above quote then?

chamcham Wrote:I actually think it's better to learn from a non-native speaker who has become fluent.
Mostly because they had to go through many of the same battles that you will face.

For grammar, I do too. I prefer being taught grammar from someone who is a native speaker of my own language. They just know how to explain stuff to me better. I'm very imressed with Tae's explanations so far. I wonder if he's a native english speaker, or at least bilingual english/Korean?

Ramchip Wrote:As far as I can see, leosmith was talking about using romaji for grammar explications, eg: verb conjugations. I think in that case it can be justified, since it's easier to see the link between

[miru - mireba] [kiku - kikeba]
than between
[見る - 見れば] [聞く - 聞けば]

In the first case, you just remove the -u and add -eba, while in the second one you have to take the last character's equivalent in the え row of the kana chart and add ば. Of course, that doesn't mean that you should only learn the romaji version of the verb, just that it can be useful to show how the conjugations work.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

uberstuber Wrote:I have to disagree with you on the use of romaji. To me romaji is just a crutch that holds back one's fluency with kana. I can't imagine a case where using romaji would benefit anyone who planned on learning the written language.

Do you really think seeing a little romaji is going to hurt? It will mean you'll have to avoid those Tae Kim lessons then.

I don't think a little would hurt very early on, and for verb conjugation I can definitely see where it would be useful. I stand corrected. I'm just wary of romaji because I've seen a lot of people get so used to it that it becomes a crutch that they can't get over.

Ramchip Wrote:As far as I can see, leosmith was talking about using romaji for grammar explications, eg: verb conjugations. I think in that case it can be justified, since it's easier to see the link between

[miru - mireba] [kiku - kikeba]
than between
[見る - 見れば] [聞く - 聞けば]

In the first case, you just remove the -u and add -eba, while in the second one you have to take the last character's equivalent in the え row of the kana chart and add ば. Of course, that doesn't mean that you should only learn the romaji version of the verb, just that it can be useful to show how the conjugations work.

Easier?.. Maybe. Until you hit the [ta-chi-tsu] row when following the kana rows makes more sense.

It is also true for some complex bungo conjugations but I guess it's fair to assume that by the time one gets to bungo, kana is no longer an issue.

leosmith Wrote:

Tae Kim Wrote:The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view.

How do you interpret the above quote then?

I think he tried (and did an excellent job at) explaining the grammar through the logic of the Japanese language itself, instead of finding English equivalents of grammar forms - which is what most textbooks do and which can be very misleading in the long run because the Japanese language just doesn't reflect the world in the same way European languages do.

Serge Wrote:

leosmith Wrote:

Tae Kim Wrote:The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view.

How do you interpret the above quote then?

I think he tried (and did an excellent job at) explaining the grammar through the logic of the Japanese language itself, instead of finding English equivalents of grammar forms - which is what most textbooks do and which can be very misleading in the long run because the Japanese language just doesn't reflect the world in the same way European languages do.

I understand now. I thought he meant from a Japanese person's point of view, but what he meant was from the Japanese language point of view. Thanks for clearing that up Serge.

Tae Kim Wrote:3. Also note that since 「じ」 is pronounced / ji /, all the small 「や」、「ゆ」、「よ」 sounds are also based off of that, namely; / jya / jyu / jyo /.
4. The same thing also applies to 「ち」 which becomes / cha / chu / cho / and 「し」 which becomes / sha / shu / sho /. (Though arguably, you can still think of it as / sya / syu / syo /.)

I'm thinking that the / jya / jyu / jyo / should have been / ja / ju / jo /, right?

I love the way he uses "full" kanji, which you can simply mouse over for kana and english definition. I've been happy that I almost never need to fly over, but I have picked up a few words too. Questions:
1. Is the vocabulary he's using common/useful as he mentions?
2. Is the amount of kanji he uses pretty common?

leosmith Wrote:Questions:
1. Is the vocabulary he's using common/useful as he mentions?
2. Is the amount of kanji he uses pretty common?

I haven't read all that much of the site, but part that caught my eye was the page about using というか／てゆうか. I hear this all the time but it took me quite a while to work out how I should be using it. The guide might have been a bit of a short cut.

"jya, jyu, jyo" and "ja, ju, jo" are different romanizations of the same sounds.
Avoid using romaji at all costs. If you just use hiragana/katakana, you'll never
run into this kind of problem.

jya, jyu and jyo are not legitimate romaji. It should be either ja, ju, jo, or zya, zyu, zyo.

Well there are a ton of different romaji standardizations. I've seen jya jyu and jyo often. In fact, the Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaji) lists it as a common variant under "Non-standard Romanization".

Anyway, that's why everyone should avoid romaji at all costs. All of these romanization systems(standard and non-standard) that become more of a crutch the more you use them.

chamcham Wrote:"jya, jyu, jyo" and "ja, ju, jo" are different romanizations of the same sounds.
Avoid using romaji at all costs. If you just use hiragana/katakana, you'll never
run into this kind of problem.

Tae Kim is explaining how to pronounce kana at this point in his blog. Didn't you use romaji to learn how to pronounce kana?

JimmySeal Wrote:jya, jyu and jyo are not legitimate romaji. It should be either ja, ju, jo, or zya, zyu, zyo.

Thanks JimmySeal. Wasn't there something you didn't like about Tae Kim's site, or was it a more of a philosophical difference of opinion with learning grammar this way?

chamcham Wrote:Well there are a ton of different romaji standardizations. I've seen jya jyu and jyo often. In fact, the Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaji) lists it as a common variant under "Non-standard Romanization".

There are really only three standardizations, and jya, ... don't fall under any of them. As you'll see in the Wikipedia article:

Quote:Jya for じゃ, which is ja in Hepburn and zya in Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki, and similarly jyu for じゅ and jyo for じょ. The extraneous y seems to be the result of confusion between the romanization systems.

The two main camps are Hepburn which approximates the sounds to an English perspective (so じゃ is "ja") and there's the Kunrei/Nihon camp that tries to make romaji logical and uniform by going ki->kya, sa->za, si->zi->zya. jya is a confused mixture of the two systems that doesn't make any sense if someone stops for a second to think about it.

leosmith Wrote:Wasn't there something you didn't like about Tae Kim's site, or was it a more of a philosophical difference of opinion with learning grammar this way?

I can't really fault him for trying to teach Japanese by explaining grammar since there are so many people who do it, but what I have a problem with is his section on "gobi" where he says...

Tae Kim Wrote:In this section, we will cover the two most commonly used gobi. 「語尾」 literally means "Language tail" and it simply refers to anything comes at the end of a sentence or a word. In this guide, I will use it to describe one or two hiragana characters that always come at the end of sentences due to the lack of better terminology.

He then goes on to present "yo" and "ne" as "gobi." Firstly, 語尾 does not literally mean "language tail" and that is the beginning of his confusion. Secondly, "yo" and "ne" are not gobi in any sense of the word, so it's ridiculous to try to use the term to refer to them. And lastly there are perfectly fine terms to refer to this type of particle in English and in Japanese.
I haven't read the whole site but this shows me that Tae Kim doesn't really know what he's talking about and he's taken a slipshod approach to understanding Japanese himself. I have e-mailed him, correcting him about this error but he has stated that he is remaining firm in his error. The romaji thing above is more evidence about how his attention to detail and correctness isn't too great.

FYI
Learner Stories: Tae Kim

JimmySeal, can you post Tae Kim's email here (unless you got it from private sources)? I'd like to send him the typo I posted. I tried to join his forum, but for some reason never got my members ID back.

I believe it's the one at the bottom of his page:

taekim.japanese AT gmail.com

I'm not a linguist however when the subject of 語尾 came up I wanted to find out what it was all about. All I've done is ask two Japanese people (one of whom is my former tutor) what they think a 'gobi' is.

JimmySeal Wrote:He then goes on to present "yo" and "ne" as "gobi." Firstly, 語尾 does not literally mean "language tail" and that is the beginning of his confusion. Secondly, "yo" and "ne" are not gobi in any sense of the word, so it's ridiculous to try to use the term to refer to them. And lastly there are perfectly fine terms to refer to this type of particle in English and in Japanese.
I haven't read the whole site but this shows me that Tae Kim doesn't really know what he's talking about and he's taken a slipshod approach to understanding Japanese himself. I have e-mailed him, correcting him about this error but he has stated that he is remaining firm in his error. The romaji thing above is more evidence about how his attention to detail and correctness isn't too great.

This is what my Japanese tutor thinks.

Tomomi (Andy's 先生) Wrote:「語尾」はことばの終わりのpartのことです。
また、話すことばの終わりのpartなので、「よ」とか「ね」もそうです。

A teacher at my school said pretty much the same thing.

So, not that my sample is that large, but the impression I get is that Japanese people themselves see 語尾 the way that Tae Kim is describing them on his site.

BUT WAIT...

Just before I hit the 'Submit' button, as JimmySeal seems so sure that Tae Kim has it wrong, I called in the big guns. At work, opposite me sits 教頭先生 who is also a 国語先生 so I showed her the quote from my tutor above and asked for her opinion.

In typical Japanese fashion, she didn't want to say my tutor was wrong, but that was kind of what she was getting at.

Off the top of my head I asked her what the 語尾 is in 「暑かった」。 My initial thought was that 「かった」 is the 語尾 but she said that ain't right. The 語尾 is 「かっ」 so in the same way that the 「た」 is not strictly a 語尾 neither are 「よ」 and 「ね」。She said she wanted more time to give me a proper explanation of the 語尾。

To me this just goes to show the confusion among Japanese people themselves as to what a 'gobi' really is. Perhaps there are more important things we should be concerning ourselves with, what do you think?

Anyway, I've 2 requests for JimmySeal to get on with (if you've got some posting time!).

1. Explain the 'gobi' and provide some examples coz I'm still not 100% sure. And am waiting for 教頭先生 to get back to me.

2. Have a look at Tae Kim and find something that you think is good that you think would be worth our time reading. It's not all bad, is it?

In my understanding, 語尾 refers to the end of a word (I believe the correct interpretation of 語 in this compound is "word," not "language"). So what I think is that た or かった are 語尾 for 暑かった. Now perhaps 語尾 can be extended to mean "the end of a sentence," but that still doesn't mean it refers to any specific part of speech. So in these sentences:
よかったです。
おもしろかった。
はやいよ。
the 語尾 are です, た, and よ, respectively, as well as others. It just happens that よ, ね and other particles often come at the end of sentences, but that doesn't mean that you can group that type of particle together and call them 語尾, because practically anything (です, た) can appear at the end of a sentence, and he is not extending the definition to include things like that.
So my belief is that 語尾 is an attribute of a specific word or sentence, and is not a type of word in itself.
I guess that's not all that different from what Mr. Kim is saying, but I still think it's senseless to pull aside sentence particles and start calling them "gobi."

I haven't thouroughly looked at the site, but I can tell that regardless of the content it has been put together to be very inviting. Of the few sections I have seen, his stuff doesn't seem to be all that bad and it's probably as good as anything else available for free on the internet.

My Japanese-Japanese dictionary gives these examples:

早いの「い」
歩くの「く」

So, I would assume with "the thing that is part of the word itself, not a conjugation of the word, and which is not able to be replaced by the kanji", though I think that works to define something else too... *brain lapse*

My dictionary (Canon Wordtank G55) also, oddly enough, mentions that other languages have gobi, and uses French as an example , stating that the "er" of "aimer" is gobi, but that pretty much negates my assumption about kanji and what-have-yous...

*shrug*

Tae Kim's guide is decent for starting off. It gives you direction, it's explanations are in simple, easy to understand English, and it leaves room for the reader to delve deeper into the subject if they want, or to start using the grammar point / whatever right away. It's like when beginner's textbooks try to tell you that Japanese is always SOV, whereas in practice it's all over the map.

The guy has given up a ton of his time to make the first baby steps of Japanese that much more accessible for Joe Blow Not-Taking-Formal-Lessons, which I think is admirable. Yes, there may be mistakes that upper level students of the language will notice, but as someone else mentioned, even Japanese people have troubles explaining some of these grammar concepts, so give the guy a break, eh?

In other news, if you're in Japan, the deadline for the June Kanji Kentei is later this week. If you haven't already registered, get on it!

Best wishes in your studies,

-ang

Has anybody looked at the Wikipedia entry for gobi?

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/??

(GRR! replace the two question marks with the kanji for gobi.)

My Japanese is nowhere near good enough to understand the article entirely, but it seems to list all these conjugated endings which are written in okurigana. Can someone decipher the entry?

My JTE used the word 語尾 in class today. We were going over the pronunciation of English verbs, and she had the class re-repeat "finished," stating 語尾がおかしい (she believed they weren't properly pronouncing the /t/ sound at the end. 語尾 does get more use with inflecting words like verbs and adjectives, but really I think it can refer to the end of any word: noun, adverb, or otherwise. That's why it makes no sense to pigeonhole it and act like it specifically refers to sentence final particles.

The Wikipedia page akrodha pointed us to says:
In the field of morphology, the word 語尾 is a technical term that refers to the part of a word that is changed by inflection. The part before that is called the 語幹 (root). So for やすい and やすかった, やす is the root, and -い and -かった are 語尾. (This would correspond to the terms "ending" or "inflection" in English).
It goes on to say that in common usage, it refers to the end of any sentence or any word, but doesn't give any examples of those.