imabi Wrote:Yes, you're right. I do get irritated. I have to write all the time in English Literature and do quite well. I have been going through the lessons in order with a beginner, and there have been a lot of notes and things that been added and at times removed.

I am more worried that everything is right on my site. Nadiatims, there have been people that have done just that, and that is saying I didn't seem to be a native English speaker. To play on that is not right.

I have to be defensive to a degree. To make a metaphor, I am the father of a newborn child. The child is weak and has little immunity. Whenever it gets pinched, there is a chance that a lot of blood flows out, and it could jeopardize the overall health of the child. Likewise, whenever there is criticism that is by any degree misleading, it has the potential to stunt its growth and viewing. It is very easy to find every comment about the site with one google search due to its unique name: I've done this.

My site is structured like any other book. Things are mentioned before and are built upon. If someone goes to a page and stumbles on something they don't know in the discussion of something else, the links are there to fill in that gap.

I think that it is time that I address here how to take my work. Some of it appears to be lack of knowing what it is, how it was made, its purpose, and what constitutes it.

...pinching a baby is not going to make it bleed. Just fyi. Anyways.

I'm definitely not a linguistics girl. I study theories, but in relation to human development, not particularly language. So most of the words you use on the site fly over my head. Heck, reading your posts is like reading an academic paper sometimes.

The problem with this last paragraph is that if you have to interrupt to explain things that confuse other people, you're going to end up confusing lots of people that simply give up instead of trying to understand.

Just my opinion.

Metaphors aren't realities, that is unless you are a crazy poet.

I don't think there is a single complicated term on my site without a link to where it's explained. So, I don't know why people aren't taking that to their advantage. I want to make students of any level have something to think about. If that is what I'm making you do, I'm doing my job.

I don't wish this to sound rude, but the only people that I have ever dealt with that have taken the purpose and approach to the website wrong have been from here. It's frustrating. For one, the time zones for everyone is completely off here. If I don't respond quick enough here, things go out of hand and never even say a word. One person got onto me for not having a search engine on my site--it has one. There have been a lot of things that if people would ask rather than assume it would have went a lot better. People are still taking my joke about being from Texas out of context, whether they mean to or not.

@imabi
just to let you know: I really appreciate all the work you've done in the website
my ultimate goal is using your website as a reference after i finish N1 (that would take at least a year and a half!)
please don't stop updating your website
thank you very much

Well a year and a half from now it will be definitely amazing. This winter break I'm going to do some major editing. I am especially going to try to get the particle lessons easier. I want to teach all of the material, but I can at least work on the format.

I hope to make at least 2 lessons a day over my break. I'm off for like 4 weeks. So, 14 X 4 is 56~! 142 + 56 = basically 200. If I can get that done, I'll have everything covered for what I want in Classical Japanese. Then, I can work on covering dialects. That will involve a ton of research, but it'll be worth it.

After school today I'll be certainly doing a lot of editing. So, stay tuned!

Imabi, I think most of the comments about your English are genuine attempts to help you. You're right that being overly critical isn't helpful, but it seems to me that you view each correction to your English as an isolated mistake. All people are saying is that these mistakes are all part of the same problem, and if you improve your writing, they'll basically take care of themselves. No one's writing is perfect. Even published professionals still have room for improvement, so if you're confident your writing is good enough, that's great, but try asking yourself: Is it worth making it better? A site like yours will always benifit from being better written.

if you do decide it's worth working on, I'd reccomend you join a writing forum, like this one, and ask for advice. They have a non-fiction section, and will presumably be able to give more constructive feedback than most of the members here. (You can just post one of your lessons in the review section, but read the rules first; you have to review other peoples work to earn the reviews for your own.)

For the most part, they are isolated here. I never said that I haven't been trying to improve the way my site is written. I improve on that everyday. That is the majority of my daily editing. Some aren't genuine attempts at helping. I don't need people telling me the obvious, but rather pointing at things that can be done in the short term. Editing will be a life long task, but what to edit is very temporary. If I had bite sized assignments, which is what I essentially do daily anyways, everything would be much more manageable. Again, this place has only stumbled on something in a developing stage. Nothing is guaranteed to stay the way it is now. For example, I changed the title to one of my first lessons.

My lessons would not be pleasing to the eyes on a forum post. I would rather direct links to a certain page.

Don't misunderstand my intentions. I always try to make improvements. I even have a notice on the side of my site that tells which lessons have recently received important/considerable edits. Even after being published two years ago, I still occassionally make changes to Lesson 1.

Again, I will like to remind everyone that I am going through the site with a beginner. We have discussed up to Lesson 8 so far and I have made considerable changes already. As we progress, vague, ambiguous, too difficult things will be spotted and amended. And, the lack of examples is being fixed as you read.

Thank you for the support. If there is A, I am to stress the a because of time, lesson that you think that I should spend special attention to, I will be more than glad to work on it. Most of the time my edited lessons are randomly picked or chosen from the viewed lessons for that day. So, in any given day, there are still over 100 lessons that I didn't look at.

Before someone mentions this, I forgot to change my word of the day. It slipped my mind before going to school. So, for the people in Japan, I am sorry for the wait.

I don't know if I will ever use your website imabi, but good work must be appreciated, so good job and keep up the good work!!

I hope that you do. There is material for basically any level.

I have done a lot of editing over the weekend and believe that I have made the majority of the site much more manageable and easier. I have taken at least 20 pages of text out simply from simplification alone. I think that I have significantly improved on the starting lessons and the particle lessons. Everyone should go take a look to see what I've been up to. There's still a lot today, and I hope to get another two hours of editing done tomorrow. On Wednesday, I'll starting making new lessons again. However, I'll still spend a lot of time in improving what's already there.

I really wish to see my site get a lot of hits. It would be a really nice Christmas present. I'm sure with the thousands of people that use this forum that everyone can contribute a click here and there, even if you don't want to necessarily use the site yourself. It's all for a good purpose, and I think everyone can find benefit.

imabi Wrote:I hope that you do. There is material for basically any level.

Keep up the good work!^_^
One thing I might like to see would be more links to Internet resources, and print resources actually in Japanese, since as an advanced learner, I'm finding resources like Niwasaburou's guide much more helpful than anything in English.

Sure, but it would be nice to have them directed to me. Even Tae Kim doesn't directly have such a page. You have to search the forums to find links to other places.

Well, I think it's about time to make new lessons. I've really taken into consideration the difficulty level of the site. So, everyone should see how different a lot of things are.

Lesson 1 Japanese Pronunciation
is rather confusing.

imabi Wrote:Morae, individual sounds

A mora (plural: morae or moras) is not an individual sound. It is a beat, a basic unit of rhythm.

You didn't explain what a mora is, you didn't say what is considered to be a mora in Japanese.

You didn't explain what pitch accent is. You didn't say how it differs from stress accent.

You didn't explain what an accented mora is.

You didn't give any links to sites with AUDIO.

You didn't explain
functions of accent:
a) differentiate homonyms: kàku 'write' / kaku 'lack'
b) indicate word/phrase boundary:
shàkai + mondai ----> shakaimòndai

And so on, and so on, and so on.

Only to mention pitch buonaparte. I mentioned just as much in some beginner's college textbooks. Look how much is mentioned in say Elementary Japanese by Yoko Hasegawa.

Let me organize an appropriate response to your concerns.

1. Morae is plural, and it was used in the plural form correctly. Mora: the unit of time equivalent to the ordinary or normal short sound. This is from dictionary.com. I changed the wording for you. Your quotation was also only part of the overall statement. Please be more courteous and show the full statement. I know it's a beat, but I didn't think it was necessary to use the word. I hope the new wording is better for you.

2. I did mention how it differentiates homonyms. There were even examples. It is also mentioned again in later lessons. I did tell what the pitch accent system is and gave the rules. Look at the wikipedia page and you will see that I don't say anything different. if anything, I tried to mention what it said in as few and simple words as possible.

3. I can tell how long you spend on any given page, and the time you spent is only equivalent to zooming down the page and catching things in the corner of your eyes. A lot of these things that you and a lot of people have said could be prevented by slowing down. If you have a list of concerns, email them. I don't want to continue to look defensive when I'm having to reply to things that are based on misunderstanding of my text.

4. Tae Kim doesn't give audios nor mentions Japanese pronunciation. It's something on the bottom of my list because it's very easy to find Japanese spoken online, and the majority of people are probably listening to a Japanese song on their iPod when they're on the site.

I'm alright when you don't agree with a wording. It's just that you may need to look more closely before you make a comment. I don't know what to think when I go back to a page when someone says something isn't there when it is. Remember, there have been a lot of comments here where people want less mentioned at the beginning. So, if you are suggesting paragraphs over something futile in the big picture, I'm just not going to be able to do it.

Now if I may, I shall return back to making my new lesson about the auxiliary verbs -nu and -tsu. If you have any concerns about any other part of the curricula, e-mail them.

ROOMAJI NOTE: My romanization style is slightly different from other places, so please read my guidelines that I go by on my site before making a judgement.

Imabi,
you're definitely an expert in being yourself.

I wish you good luck.

Why thank you. I take that as a complement. You do have to admit that no 16 year old would have started and committed two years to something that I have. I think the project is novel. In fact, I am going to start teaching it in a club at my school to people. In preparation, I have been trying to get words out I think they don't know. So, even mentioning a word like homonym is pushing it.

I finished making a lesson about ぬ and つ. I tried to find examples that weren't lengthy. I also tried to make the exercises as interesting as possible. I'll probably add more examples though.

http://www.imabijapaneselearningcenter.c...son143.htm

imabi Wrote:You do have to admit that no 16 year old would have started and committed two years to something that I have. I think the project is novel. In fact, I am going to start teaching it in a club at my school to people. In preparation, I have been trying to get words out I think they don't know. So, even mentioning a word like homonym is pushing it.

Because we wouldn't want to risk confusing your intellectual inferiors, now would we?

tylerdevlin Wrote:

imabi Wrote:You do have to admit that no 16 year old would have started and committed two years to something that I have. I think the project is novel. In fact, I am going to start teaching it in a club at my school to people. In preparation, I have been trying to get words out I think they don't know. So, even mentioning a word like homonym is pushing it.

Because we wouldn't want to risk confusing your intellectual inferiors, now would we?

Dude, you'd be surprised how stupid people are even in college. It's depressing.

Note: I don't classify myself necessarily as smart. Just willing to work, unlike most of my classmates.

Which is exactly why I have had to dumb down the language. Tylerdevin, the people likely to show up are by no means going to be the astute. There are appropriate areas of the site to facilitate any given level of learner.

imabi Wrote:the people likely to show up are by no means going to be the astute

So, instead of trying to lift their level up you dumb yours down?... That's pathetic.

Excuse me? Obviously you haven't read my site before. I still teach the same material but with less confusing terms. I don't think you know what you're talking about.

I personally want to help the people that are going to show up to be better students not only in foreign language but in other subjects as well. I want them to see something that can be exciting, hopefully making wrong paths turn the other direction. I know these people personally that I'm going to help, and I don't think you should make such judgement without learning the facts. My first 15 lessons teach much more than the majority of places. I want to make the information possible to be taught to them in a fun environment. Japanese conjugation is agglutinative. Should I really use this word in my lecture? Or, should I just show how conjugate works? Should I call double consonants geminates? Should I call a Sokuon a moraic obstruent? I'm tuning down the language, not tuning down the material.

It's what many people have suggested, if I can say the same thing in half the words and with words that average people actually know, then my site is better off for a larger audience.

I invite you Inny Jan to be a member of my site and learn more about my project and how my curriculum is set up. I think that it would be a great tool for you. My site still manages to teach things linguistically correct while at the same time making it approachable to anyone. I still use the correct terms for the majority of things, but I always make sure they are defined in simple language.

You don't need to dumb down anything, if you explain it well. First time you use 'homonyms' just put it brackets (words that are pronounced the same but have different meaning). Even an idiot will understand that. Problem is you don't always explain it.

Firstly, you *have* to explain English grammar terms with examples in English. Even the smartest readers will often be un-familiar with English grammar terminology, as we don't learn them at school (at least in England), though we'll recognise them if you give a good example sentence.
For example, I took a look at lesson 143 you just posted below, and it starts with this; "The perfective refers to an action that has been realized". What does realized mean in this context? Do you mean completed; if so use why not use that word? If no why not explain? This is a grammar reference, you can't leave ambiguity in your writing.

I decided to look at a few earlier lessons, and they're also too hard. Take this beginner lesson on nouns: http://www.imabijapaneselearningcenter.com/lesson5.htm

"Fukusuukei 複数形, the plural form, despite being irrelevant, is somewhat emphatic." -

This sentence is too complex, and it's also confused me. Why is the plural form "irrelevant"? You mean I talk about myself and people will get from context that I mean my friends? If you mean the same rules apply as for the singular form, then you need to say it.
Also you say it's emphatic but what exactly does it emphasise? That size of the group? The fact we know each other? Am I just meant to guess? lol.

"Native words may be pluralized by repetition. These words are plural with no definite quantity. When repeating, voicing happens when possible."

So I can repeat a word twice in a sentence and it's plural? If you mean repeating the word against immediately after saying it, you need to state that. Also when is voicing "possible"? I've no idea what that part means. If you explained about voicing in a previous lesson, you need to link to it cos I'm left confused.

"2nd person is considered rude because Japanese people normally address each other with each others' name."

This is not a good explanation. First the English is broken, you don't need to state "each other" twice. What you mean is "address each other by name".
Also "address" is ambiguous - I address my friends by name in English all the time ("Hello Mike, hello Mary"). The unusual thing about Japanese is that they use names *instead* of 2nd Person pronouns, i.e. "Is Mike coming to the shops?" instead of "are you coming to the shops?".
Illustrate this using example conversations (like Tae Kim does); don't assume that the reader knows *anything* about Japanese. If you do go into this in a later lesson, link to it.

Good job overall; but I think the problem is, because you understand an explanation you think others will. Sorry but it's not that simple.

p.s.

imabi Wrote:..people likely to show up are by no means going to be the astute.

"going to be astute"; it's an adjective so no "the". Weird use of English grammar again, plus high-level knowledge of English grammar terms makes me wonder - are you actually a native English speaker?

The plural forms in modern Japanese are quite emphatic. In Classical Japanese ども was almost always used that way. Realized ≒ (idk how to make the equivalent sign) completed. I don't want to use the word completed because it may cause people to relate both auxiliaries as being acceptable in transitive contexts. Classical Japanese is hard in of itself.

Even some idiots know that Japanese words don't have to be plural, especially if they play Pokemon.

The example sentences make it quite obvious what repetition is meant. The examples even use the ditto 々mark. Yes, even verbs and adverbs with a nuance of more than one can be made in Japanese with this form of repetition.

I intended for astute to be the noun. I don't want to mundane in my speech. I always try to make it creative. English is weird altogether in my opinion.

Some of your concerns can be addressed within the text as a whole. If I'm not clear on things--which I know there are plenty of instances--I am willing to change them.
I'm sorry that things may be hard. I would be glad to help you, and at the same time that will give benefit to both of us.

Japanese voicing, which is called Rendaku, does have its restraints--particularly Lyman's Law. It is an interesting topic, one that can easily take 20 pages to fully explain. I should avoid that room of discussion at that point. I do mention it in Advanced IMABI though. I have since changed the wording to fit the level at that point.

僕たち would indeed be talking about oneself and friends. Just the use of that suffix suggests group, even if they're not present. Emphatic as in the mood. Idk what exactly you meant on the rest. Sorry.

When I used each other twice, I did so to be parallel in my statement and to make sure the entire point was caught. I don't think parallelism is broken English. Redundant, yes. My physics teacher actually talks that way all the time, and her redundancy actually works.

Lastly, if I make you think hard about something, I'm doing my job. I did use homophonous in Lesson 1 with the definition in context in the sentence with examples. I do, for the most part, give definitions of terms. If not, links are normally there to direct you where it was first mentioned.

Thanks for the advice.

lol, your post doesn't help at all! Just more questions:

What does the plural form emphasise exactly?
Why is Classical Japanese ども important here - it relates to current grammar how?
How would I know 々 is a "ditto" mark? Where do you say that?
Tree repeated is kiki, yet you've written kibi - why?

If there's a difference between two words (completed and realized), you *have* to state it! Also don't assume the reader has any previous knowledge of Japanese (apart from from your site).

imabi Wrote:I intended for astute to be the noun. I don't want to mundane in my speech. I always try to make it creative. English is weird altogether in my opinion.

"The Astute" isn't a noun - if you mean "the smartest" then you have to qualify it - "the most astute". I'd also argue that a grammar guide isn't the place for creative writing.

imabi Wrote:When I used each other twice, I did so to be parallel in my statement and to make sure the entire point was caught. I don't think parallelism is broken English.

"address each other by each others names" actually means I can call Friend1 Mary, despite that being the name of Friend2. You actually mean "address each other by using their name", which is shortened to "address each other using their name" or more commonly "by name".

Hope my post helps a little