I agree with Aijin; I've told my little story before, but I had passed JLPT 1 and was able to have normal conversations (for the most part) and read at a decent level without doing that much grammar study, and I thought I was fine. But then when I came to OSU and had to teach the grammar out of the very rigorous JSL, I found out that there was a ton of stuff that I didn't know about Japanese grammar, and just reading through and teaching the JSL grammatical explanations (and of course continuing to read things and speak to Japanese people) improved my Japanese a great deal.

I'm not necessarily saying that nobody will ever get good without studying grammar thoroughly, but the "exposure > explanations" didn't work for me. I had a huge amount of exposure in Japan and there were still fundamental things about the language I either didn't know or couldn't do well. I could read a Soseki novel with decent comprehension but couldn't have a basic conversation without making numerous elementary mistakes.

In the beginning(beginner level). I'd say ignore grammar or at least work with basic grammar. In the beginning you won't understand much anyhow. It's later on through immersion that you will pick it up natural. In my own experience with japanese so far. I've found grammar to be helpful as it points you in the right direction of which is right or wrong to say/use,etc. But you need examples, a lot of reading and a lot of immersion to fully and correctly speak/write. Basically all these factors go together in the long-run.

I'm sure everyone knows this but if someone where to study grammar by itself without immersion it would be hard to get far and same applies the other way. Although you can get far with just immersion. Doing both, speeds up the process.

I tend to agree that if you want to get really, really good at a foreign language it's better to study grammar. Even though people often say that we learned our native languages as children without textbooks, most of us studied grammar in school to refine those language skills. There tends to a noticeable difference between how an educated native speaker expresses himself vs a native speaker with little to no education, and I think nearly all of us would like to be able to express ourselves as an educated native speaker would.

But is rigorous grammar study particularly necessary for someone at the beginner-intermediate stage? Perhaps not.

I would say that it's actually most vital in the beginner and intermediate stages, as that is when one begins developing their habits. If someone learns to do something correctly from the start it will be infinitely easier for them than if they had ingrained bad habits through years of incorrect usage and have to try and fix it. Try getting an adult English speaker to use "well" instead of "good" after they've incorrectly been saying "I'm good!" their entire lives, for example not an easy task. Whereas someone who learned the difference between 'well' and 'good' as a child and has used them correctly their entire life has to put no thought into it.

But is the OP actively using incorrect grammar at this point or is he/her concentrating on passive input? If one is only listening and reading and not actively communicating with anyone what does it matter?

I'm not an expert in Japanese and this is not meant to refute the point that you should study grammar. But its use, I think, is more suitable to educated writing that speaking. The example of "I'm good!" vs "I'm well!" is one of those "mistakes" that linguists don't actually consider a mistake. That is a standard usage for English speakers, and its part of the English grammar in a descriptive, linguistic sense. Teachers and parents may want children to say "I'm well", just like they don't want people to split the infinitive, but that is miles apart from the kind of grammatical mistakes that a second language user makes. It's not really convincing that those kind of mistakes get sorted out from grammar study rather than immersion anyway. The other example of ~ば, 〜たら、~なら, 〜と... I don't want to step too far since I'm not an expert, but the usage in Kansai (where I am) doesn't correspond to the usage described in textbooks or grammar explanations anyway.

I think you're right, there's a big difference between the grammar that native speakers study in school and what second language learners need to study, and there's a big difference between native speaker pet peeves like "I'm good" and things like the difference between "the" and "a/an".

I meant 'well' just as a simple example to illustrate how incorrect patterns are easier to fix before they become embedded in one's usage. Things like ~ば, 〜たら、~なら, 〜と or the differences between しか、ばかり、and だけ aren't used incorrectly by a large population of native speakers. The differences between things like とても, and かなり most people won't be too bothered by if you use gramatically incorrectly, but the conditionals arequite essential elements of the language, and a native speaker will realize instantly when one is being used incorrectly, even if they don't consciously know the grammatical rules for it. It has the same basic wrongness to it an English native speaker feels when they hear something like "The fish I ate it good" rather than something that only would be marked off by an English professor.
Can you explain how conditionals are used differently in Kansai in your experience?

My grammar study pretty much consists of taking a particular grammar point and getting a whole lot of sentences with a translation that allow me to quickly get the idea of what the grammar does to the meaning of the sentence. I did it for the whole of KM2 and it worked good as... not saying I'm a genius who can use it all perfectly with no mistakes but then again that was never my goal when studying it that way. Just wanted to be able to understand it when I came across it in a real novel. Mission accomplished - and there's my endless supply of sentences that further illustrate its usage and help to begin ingraining it in my mind.

If I had sat down and mastered every single point before moving onto the next then it'd still be another few years before I can even understand intermediate stuff. It's a pretty darn quick way to get your head around a lot of grammar. Quick, not comprehensive. Quick.

Well, in casual/colloquail speech in Osaka, it's my experience that people usually use たら as a general purpose conditional. Not to say the others are absolute never used or that the meaning isn't slightly different for native speakers between the three, but anyways not like what you would think to use based on reading grammar explanations only.

Anyway, on reflection, maybe I was just nitpicking since I don't really disagree with the actual advice so much.

たら is the most widely used conditional in standard Japanese as well; the fact that you aren't aware of the differences doesn't mean they don't exist.

Advice:

1. Delete your vocab deck.
2. Read
3. SRS Sentences if you'd like (optional) that you like
4. Complete cycles of 2 (and 3) over and over
5. ?????
6 Profit!

Brokenvai Wrote:Advice:

1. Delete your vocab deck.
2. Read
3. SRS Sentences if you'd like (optional) that you like
4. Complete cycles of 2 (and 3) over and over
5. ?????
6 Profit!

Truer words were never spoken.

You don't have to make a conscious effort of breaking grammar down in order to learn how to use it. We humans happen to have an intuitive capacity for figuring out and assimilating grammar structures... the same way everyone learned their native language. Of course, grammar study helps to sharpen and delimit what you have already "felt". Another thing is that Japanese is incredibly reliant on context, so the study of isolated sentences that illustrate a grammar point won't take you far.

For what it's worth, I just now took a flip through my Osaka-ben book, and it says:
"２．１．３仮定形
仮定の意味を表す場合、標準語では「～ば」「～たら」「～と」を使い分けますが、大阪弁の場合、ほとんど「～たら」一つで済ませてしまいます。「見ればわかる」「角を曲がるとある」は「ミタラワカル」「カドマガッタラアル」が普通です。

2.1.3 Subjunctive/Conditional Tense
While standard Japanese has three conjugations according to the situation-e.g. miru (to see) - mireba/mitara/miruto; magaru (to turn) magareba/magattara/magaruto-Osakan always uses the "tara" form: miru (to see) - mitara and magaru (to turn) magattara."

The fact you aren't aware of the regional differences doesn't mean they don't exist. But to each his own.