imabi Wrote:I wouldnt know how to do that. I would be glad to if I knew how. That is something I would ask my web host tech people to help me with. The length of the names of the lessons are not equal.

Something like:
<li><a class="section fw-class-705fa88b82ccb91e9fee3e16b9891815" class="rel" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.imabijapaneselearningcenter.com/lesson10.htm" title="The Particle Wa">Lesson 10</a></li>
(Taken from your code, and edited with a title tag.)

The lesson names wouldn't have to be equal, as the text would only appear when you mouseover the links, e.g. put your mouse over the blog titles in this blog's blogroll: http://japaneseliterature.wordpress.com/

I really would need help then as I am technoligically stupid. Thank you for that information. I will try to see what I can do. I would like to get the inside links and directories done first before i consider that though.

Oh, you built it with a What You See is What You Get (AKA non-coding) editor? OK, well it shouldn't take that long to search for the links (e.g "Lesson 1") and add a title tag as shown, but yeah, it's just a little extra thing, and your content should come first.

I think I know how to do what you want. I just hope there isn't a size restriction. Thank you for the advice.

I think the new name meta tags will take a while to be functional. I have been adding directory links and making it toward people can easily go to the next lesson at the end of a page.

It will have to be continued once I return from lunch.

This is looking like it's going to take hours to implement. At least it will be even more navigable.

To icecream and Asriel: Your requests have been met for 1-40. It's been a lot of work, and I still have 102 pages left. I've also taken the time to spot typos and format errors.

Update: Now 1-80. Fingers are officially tired.

Update:　Lessons 1-130 have been met. It really looks great.　Now, to get to the last 12 lessons and the directories will have been made icecream and Asriel! Thanks a lot.　：）

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Thora Wrote:How about starting out with a resource for general learners which explains classical forms still existing in modern Japanese? When learners encounter classical forms that aren't easily searchable in their dictionaries or grammar books, such an online resource would be really helpful. I'm thinking of idioms, holdover grammar and "weird" archaic language in period dramas or games. Some folks might be interested in explanations of the classical derivation of current forms even if they have no intention of learning classical Japanese.

I would agree with this. I've seen this a lot; fairly recently in the "what's this word/phrase" thread someone was asking about 愛せど and got some total nonsense responses due to people not being familiar with the classical form.

I've been developing some classical lessons based on the 百人一首 for future teaching, maybe I should start posting them here.

As for the classical lessons, a few things I noticed:
- It is not typical to romanize classical Japanese into modern, Hepburn romanization, except maybe for very general resources. It's true that for the title of a work, like Man'yoshu, it will be done, but if you're romanizing actual text, the standard way to do it is to use straight transcription of the kana, in kun-reishiki form. The reason for this is that it avoids any assumptions about how the syllables were actually pronounced in the various historical time periods. (Although I'm not sure romanization is necessary in classical lessons anyway...)
- "Classical Japanese" is a vague term, and sometimes you make statements that only apply to particular types of writing (i.e. your claim that few sino-Japanese words are used in "classical Japanese" is only true of certain genres, like 物語 and 和歌)
- "Punctuation is virtually nonexistant" once again, depends on the age of the text and the genre, and punctuation started to be added to old Japanese texts very early on (Kamakura period or earlier). (I'm also not sure what the answer to the "why is there no punctuation" is supposed to be)
- "A space between segments" is something I have never seen in a classical text; most of the time everything is written as one long flowing text with no spaces, although sometimes a new line was started in certain cases -- once again this
depends on the age and genre of the text.

- "Actions are in the present if and only if there is not a temporal noun that tells otherwise." This is misleading; stories are often told with bare shuushikei forms where we would use a "narrative past" in English.

- A very important use of the rentaikei form is to nominalize a phrase (i.e. the Classical equivalent of modern の or こと)

It's 愛すれど. ど follows the 已然形 of all verbal classes.

I'm familiar with basic conjugations; nevertheless 愛せど　occurs frequently in modern Japanese (particularly in songs) -- presumably due to the influence of regular 4-dan conjugation.

Oh, well in that case it's just 愛す being used as a 五段活用動詞. You would be right then.

I've gone through the first several lessons and eased the difficulty again quite substantially. They were much harder in times past, and they are now easier. If I wanted to still keep a pattern not yet mentioned directly, I linked it to where it is discussed. Of course, the sentences are either simple or complex, so the definition of anything in them can be easily discerned.

My particles lessons are much more extensive than other places, but I don't think that they are overly difficult. They are being made better by the day, and I'm sure I'll get to a point where they are easily decipherable for everyone. I'm trying to make sure that I'm being as less superfluous as possible.

I realize that how one teaches the vowels will vary according to where they're from (for what it's worth I'm Australian), but might I suggest the following:

A like the u in "but".
I Like the ea in "eat" but short.
U Like the u in "put".
E Like the e in "elephant".
O Like the o in "hot".

I think using "father" for A and "Sue" for U is less accurate than you can be because these sounds are long. And in particular pronouncing O like "oak" as you suggest is something I associate with the typical anglo-gaijin accent.

I think vowel devoicing is not necessary to teach right at the start, just bring it up when teaching masu and desu.

The difference in spelling rules for long vowels in Native Words, Sino-Japanese Words and Foreign Words doesn't need to be taught. Also I'm not so sure you can generalize like that.

Likewise, pitch is should be mentioned briefly if at all. Maybe you could put that in a later lesson or in a special pronunciation section. If I were a beginner learner, this would just be confusing and boring, I'd just want to learn some Japanese already.

regarding consonants, where they are the same they need not be mentioned. For T,D,CH,TSU,J, SH the sounds are not articulated by the tip of the tongue curling, instead the tongue is very static in Japanese and these sounds come from contact between the front top of the tongue and the alveolar ridge and/or contact between the top of the tongue and hard palate.

In general I think you're going into too much detail about pronunciation in a way that will be boring to beginners and much of this can be picked up naturally with listening practice or corrected later. Thorough explanation isn't really that useful without accompanying audio to demonstrate it. Also why not use hiragana?

lesson 2:
SVO, SOV distinction is not necessary, because it mostly doesn't apply to japanese anyway. Japanese is more like Xa,Yb,Zc,...,V where abc represent particles and X,Y and Z are optional, can come in any order and can be subjects, objects or any other number of things (depending on particles).

Macro-micro, belongs in a wikipedia article or linguistics book, not a textbook. No-one cares.

parts of speech, belongs in an appendix.

The rest of this lesson is more information that belongs in an appendix or wikipedia article. A beginner who can't even read hiragana yet, doesn't need to know words like komejirushi, joutaigo and setsuzokujoshi. Seriously introduce this stuff as it becomes useful, not as a mass of information to be remembered right at the start.

I'll write some more suggestions later. If you want to see an example of well written and explained japanese lessons look up tae-kim. You need to seriously edit. Teach less to teach more.

Your Australian English makes those assumptions inaccurate for American English.

I make it quite clear that they are like those words and that they are not long as their English counterparts.

Devoicing is important I think. My guess is that people will be listening to music 50% of the time they visit the site.　So, everything is inevitable to hear.

The pitch is as brief as possible. And, a lesson will be made for sometime next year. I mention pitch just as much as some textbooks like in Elementary Japanese by Yoko Hasegawa. I just happen to give examples and state the rules.

As for the placement of the tongue, that is what would be confusing. Again, the word like is crucial. These points are addressed in Lesson 116.

I think using Hiragana in Lesson 1 would be a horrible idea. Not until it is taught should it be mentioned.

The way you describe word order is qualified as such in that section. I would suggest read more closely. My new student caught this, so I don't know why it is that ambiguous.

My site is based heavily on what the part of speech something is, and that section gives me a way to direct people to many areas of the site. So, I'm not going to take it down.　I will consider, however, getting rid of the Japanese terms.

I really don't like Tae Kim's lessons as I think that they are way too basic and watered down. This may be for a lot of people, but I try to be as least facetious as possible.

U in but in America makes an uh sound.
U in put makes a French like e sound in America.
O in hot in America makes an ah sound.

As such, I can't rely on your dialect. There are more Americans than Australians, and America is politically more important. So, it will be the dialect of instruction.

I don't want to sound rough, but I want to also point out things that you may have missed.

"The difference in spelling rules for long vowels in Native Words, Sino-Japanese Words and Foreign Words doesn't need to be taught. Also I'm not so sure you can generalize like that."

Uh, yes you can. There is a very stark difference in orthography in these three words and in the Revised Hepburn Romanization system. Anyways, I see your point. So, I reworded that section in a way it doesn't have to be mentioned.

Also, I don't know if you counted, but there were a lot of words given in Lesson 1 for examples. I think the avid beginner would have plenty to chew on just from that page.

To Everyone: I have noticed several times that suggestions are already on the site. So, try to make sure before making me go in circles. Thanks in advance.

For pronunciation, how about adding some short sound clips (or link to some)? There are many different kinds of English, and if there's one thing I've learned from using British language learning materials, is that even though it's the same language, and I've probably watched every episode of Monty Python, or just about, trying to imagine how a British person would pronounce a certain word can be surprisingly hard.

That is definitely a good idea. There are plenty of free audios that I could link them to. I will have to do that later though.

I have to admit, I didn't look at it as much as I thought I would -- I got caught up and had to fix some work-related things and didn't really get a chance.

First off, links to other lessons as well as at the end of the lesson: great addition! It's super helpful to go straight back to something that I need to know. I'd like to see more of it -- maybe look into some software that has some sort of wiki-syntax, it can do a lot of things for you.

It's very dense and grammar term-iffic. Maybe it's because I didn't read the required lessons you said were required, but you also said that you didn't have to be a linguist -- just have a good grasp of modern Japanese. I understand modern Japanese well, but I had no idea what "agglutinative" meant, or what the difference was between 連用形 and 連体形.

Then you go and throw in a lot of explanations, and then examples thrown in the end. The examples are just sentences or poems with a translation (I'm assuming your own?) thrown in.

I would like to see it where you make an example after the point you are illustrating. Instead of "here's all the rules you need to know, it's pretty dense, and you should know what this grammar means......aaand here's tons of examples with words you probably don't know," it would be easier to digest if it were like "here's how these words work...short, unrealistic examples to illustrate the point...and then you can do this too....more unrealistic examples...then go on to show the 'real life' examples." It was frustrating to be reading example sentences with words that I didn't know and conjugations or particles that I wasn't sure how they working were in there.

And instead of having kanji/kana/romaji/translation, ditch the romaji and maybe put in word-by-word translations, or at least rare words and the words that are displaying the grammar point the lesson is about.


But again, I didn't give it the concentration it probably deserved, so I might just be missing something.

Agglutinative in Japanese is 膠着 if that helps. I should have that linked to where it was defined. The base terms are linked numerous times to their original explanation. So, you did miss that.

Yes, the translations are my own.

It's inevitable to have words you don't know when learning Classical Japanese. Since you do have to find authentic examples, it's hard to find a simple sentence with just what you're looking for, and if you only take part of a sentence, you may leave out crucial information to the understanding of the sentence.

I don't think anything really has that much complexity to it so far in my Classical Japanese discussion. I do break things up they way you say when I deem it best fit. But, when I think things aren't that overly different from each other, I bunch it all together.

Conjugations come with reading the lessons on verbs. There are a few instances I believe where I give examples of what commonly follows what, and there are also some directories to other lessons to find the specific information you were wanting.

Romanization has been curtailed for IMABI IV for almost each lesson except 133-135. I guess it needs to be removed.

Nothing in IMABI IV is unrealistic. Open those books and you'll be sure to find much more complicated items that I haven't even addressed.

Some of it will be lack of vocabulary that makes IMABI IV hell in a hand basket. And, I'm aware of this. Believe it or not, a lot of the vocabulary is still existent in Modern Japanese, you might just not realize it. For example, をさをさ survived.

I did add intense notes to the first main lesson about grammatical points inside the example sentences. But, I decided not afterwards to make it harder and to make it toward people have to deconstruct the example sentences.

I will consider what you have said, but I'm afraid it can't be gotten to until sometime tomorrow.

If you don't mind Asriel, could you send me questions you have on the Classical Japanese material? I think I can best address the knowledge gap if I answer your questions and then add the answers somehow to the text. I have skimmed through the lessons just now, and I think the example sentences are fare game. I tried to choose relatively simple examples believe it or not. Classical Japanese itself is just hard. So, you will definitely need some tutorials.

Lastly, remember that I'm trying to combine the ideas of having it toward one can go to a page and understand it and have it toward that there is a persuasion to go in order. I'm trying to lessen that restraint, but it does nevertheless help out a lot in discerning the text.

lesson 3

Again a case of way too much information. The historical information may be interesting if it's accurate. I couldn't be bothered reading it. But again beginners don't need to wade through tables outlining words like hentaigana, jinmeiyougana, nanorigana etc. If you really feel it necessary then link to an appendix or a wiki article or something.

The chart of 167 additional katakana is unnecessary as most of it is never used. For example I have never ever seen ラ゜and カ゜or テァ etc. I suspect the vast majority of Japanese people have also never seen these.

Yotsugana bit is too long and mostly unnecessary. Just say that for standard Japanese ず／づ and じ／ぢ are pronounced the same in standard Japanese but vary in some dialects.

支持 does not mean instruction...

Your explanation of sokuon is difficult to understand. And this bit is unnecessary "A Sokuon is never used with n, m, r, w, and y and is only used in foreign words with g, z, d, h, and b. When a Sokuon is more audible at the end of a word, it will be left in Kana as a っ. ".

Kana duplication is almost never used in modern Japanese.

I was saying you should put in more unrealistic examples to illustrate the points better, instead of having pieces that include things that the reader hasn't learned yet. That way if something is uncertain in the real examples, they know that they understand the grammar and can then parse out the vocabulary.

Lesson 132 Wrote:父はなほ人にて　母なん藤原なりける
ちちはなほびとにて　ははなんふじはらなりける
The father was a normal person, and the mother was a Fujiwara.
From the Ise Monogatari.

Notes: In this sentence, nite is the ni Ren'youkei of the copula nari with the conjunctive particle te and narikeru is the nari Ren'youkei of the copula nari with the recollective auxiliary verb keri in the Rentaikei keru. Although sentences should end in the Shuushikei. There was always a constant tilt to using the Rentaikei for special emphasis which eventually fused the two bases as one.

Here's one example (the first example sentence in lesson 133) is like "yeah, and so as you can see, this is keri" which isn't taught until 9 lessons later.

These next two...

Lesson 139 Wrote:死なむ薬も何かはせむ。
しなむくすりもなにかはせむ。
What would I do with death preventing medicine?
From the Taketori Monogatari.

Lesson 137 Wrote:月な見給ひそ。
つきなみたまひそ。
Don't look at the moon.

Where are the verb endings given? I couldn't find anything where む is a negative (or a question?) or that そ indicated a negative command. It's nice that you have the conjugations of the verbs/adjectives/etc, but I can't seem to find endings. I'm probably missing them.
edit: i realized this sounded like "wtf man, where's this info??" I'm actually asking because I couldn't find verb endings.

Actually, I've taken a better look at it now. All the information is there, even if I did have to go back and search other lessons for the information. I guess I wanted to be spoonfed all the information I needed to understand it right there instead of looking in other lessons. That's one reason I like the names of the lessons and links in the lessons to the other lessons being referenced.

There's also a lot of words that I didn't know, but that's a vocab issue. I'd be nice if it was there, but that would take a lot of revision.

lesson 4

Again too much information.

心得 doesn't mean hint.

引数 seems to mean 'argument' in the programming sense, not 'subtraction' which is 引き算.

暖 doesn't mean spring and isn't pronounced はる. It's 春.

マジ is not written 本気. If you see 本気 it's pronounced ほんき unless there is furigana above it specifying something different like リーリ. I'm guessing you read this in a manga or something. Sometimes different words are written above kanji for effect.

the character for Autumn is 秋.

I have never heard the word "offing" in my entire life.

It's generally not important to even recognize what type of reading something is. Kunyomi, onyomi and 'other' is pretty much enough.

No one wants to learn a nonstandard romanisation system. It could be annoying when typing...Using all sorts of pitch marks etc won't result in correct pronunciation, only a lot of listening will.

in your exercises section:
"10. Illustrate the rules of the IMABI version of Romanization."
seriously? just teach standard romanisation used for typing.

Also lesson 4:

Quote:変わる かわ） kawaru To change

Kana typo

Quote:沖 Oki Offing

That character's meaning is more accurately translated as "open water".

Quote:Today 今朝 Kesa

That means "this morning", not today. Today is 今日 which would also fit in this category.

Quote:Sweetness 甘味 Amami

That is the actual reading for those characters, so it doesn't fit in the category. Instead it is in the category of compounds that mix on and kunyomi.
甘い amai sweet (kunyomi)
味 mi flavor (onyomi, as seen in other words like 七味)

Quote:Minister 大臣 Otodo (DAIJIN)

While this is in the dictionary, it is almost always read as daijin (I've actually never seen it read otodo). You are better off listing common examples in such an early lesson.

As nadiatims said, I'm guessing you got some of these examples (the seasons) from literary furigana usage, not actual accepted words. マジ is another instance, but as I've actually seen that one in a couple manga I was willing to let it slide, though really you'd be better off picking an accepted word for teaching beginners. I recommend looking up words in a dictionary (NOT EDICT!!) before putting them as examples. Yahoo is a good one for finding pretty rare usages. If it's not in there, don't use it.

Unlike what others suggest, I support adding the background/historical/etymological info even to earlier lessons. Interesting tidbits like that gave me motivation when I was still a learner. I've seen some stuff on the basic lessons that even I didn't know yet. It might be a good idea to group it at the bottom in an Omake section as hyperlinked footnotes though.

I also think it's a bad idea to make up a new type of romaji that learners will see nowhere else. Just use hepburn (traditional hepburn-style long vowels since it's a pain to add macrons manually). Better yet, teach the major romanization systems and maybe use them to introduce the kana (along with sound files for pronunciation), but never use them in the actual lessons. Using romaji as a crutch always slows learners.

You might want to consider turning the entire site into a moderated wiki if you really want a lot of help. You could also make use of bots to automatically generate links to linguistics terms etc. If you do so you should put the site under a creative commons license though.

I've seen 大臣 read as おとど in Genji (although it can also be read 大臣 in compounds like 左大臣). The word is pretty rare in modern Japanese, though.

"offing" is an accurate translation of 沖, but it's not the best word to use there since it's a relatively rare word that even most native English speakers will not be familiar with.

Quote:I was saying you should put in more unrealistic examples to illustrate the points better, instead of having pieces that include things that the reader hasn't learned yet.

I'm not certain whether this is in reference to the classical lessons or not, but if it is, you really have no choice with classical. Making up your own sentences in teaching materials is not a good idea since nobody is a native speaker of classical Japanese, so you have no way of knowing whether your example is accurate or not. This is especially problematic for things like けり where the usage is still not fully understood even by specialists.

For classical I tend to think the best thing to do is memorize the basic conjugations and get a chart of conjugations and suffixes, and then just dive into a text and ask questions.

(If enough people are interested in classical I may start posting the 百人一首 materials I've been developing...)

指示 should be present. Otodo and maji are usages of Gikun. I'm sorry, but I'm not taking it down.

Some of your corrections nadiatim are wrong. Look up Gikun because you have shown that you don't know what it is.　心得　does mean hint as in 嗜み.

Some things are just typing errors.

I make it clear that my system of romanization is a revised version of Hepburn. I will kindly ask you again to read the text more closely.

I think I would have just have as many people complaining about too little discussion on the history of the writing and those that don't want it at all.

Asriel Wrote:I was saying you should put in more unrealistic examples to illustrate the points better, instead of having pieces that include things that the reader hasn't learned yet. That way if something is uncertain in the real examples, they know that they understand the grammar and can then parse out the vocabulary.

Lesson 132 Wrote:父はなほ人にて　母なん藤原なりける
ちちはなほびとにて　ははなんふじはらなりける
The father was a normal person, and the mother was a Fujiwara.
From the Ise Monogatari.

Notes: In this sentence, nite is the ni Ren'youkei of the copula nari with the conjunctive particle te and narikeru is the nari Ren'youkei of the copula nari with the recollective auxiliary verb keri in the Rentaikei keru. Although sentences should end in the Shuushikei. There was always a constant tilt to using the Rentaikei for special emphasis which eventually fused the two bases as one.

Here's one example (the first example sentence in lesson 133) is like "yeah, and so as you can see, this is keri" which isn't taught until 9 lessons later.

These next two...

Lesson 139 Wrote:死なむ薬も何かはせむ。
しなむくすりもなにかはせむ。
What would I do with death preventing medicine?
From the Taketori Monogatari.

Lesson 137 Wrote:月な見給ひそ。
つきなみたまひそ。
Don't look at the moon.

Where are the verb endings given? I couldn't find anything where む is a negative (or a question?) or that そ indicated a negative command. It's nice that you have the conjugations of the verbs/adjectives/etc, but I can't seem to find endings. I'm probably missing them.
edit: i realized this sounded like "wtf man, where's this info??" I'm actually asking because I couldn't find verb endings.

Actually, I've taken a better look at it now. All the information is there, even if I did have to go back and search other lessons for the information. I guess I wanted to be spoonfed all the information I needed to understand it right there instead of looking in other lessons. That's one reason I like the names of the lessons and links in the lessons to the other lessons being referenced.

There's also a lot of words that I didn't know, but that's a vocab issue. I'd be nice if it was there, but that would take a lot of revision.

む has been mentioned before as being the equivalent of ～よう.

I think the suggestion is that your examples for 熟字訓 should be more common things. 暖 read as はる is exceedingly rare; I don't think you will ever see that outside of the 万葉集 or some kanbun (or possibly in a name). It has no place in lesson 4. I have the same opinion about 大臣 and 水面, which are words that many learners will *never* encounter in their entire Japanese learning experience. It's especially baffling because there are many common examples you could include instead, and there's nothing special about 大臣 that makes it particularly useful for beginners to see.

I think the basic point is -- why call the lessons "beginner" lessons and include all kinds of obscure stuff that many people will never encounter even as experts?

Items of concern have been addressed. Thank you.

As to Asriel: I can help you aside from here with Classical Japanese and see where I may need to add grammar notes. I'm trying to wait a bit so I have most of the course made so that I can just make directories.

To Jarvik 7: Thank you, some of these were very careless mistakes. Some things I just do want to keep because I think they're important. And, my romanization style is only a more qualified outline of the Hepburn style.

To nadiatims: Please look up Gikun, 心得, offing, nanori (because it's not called nanorigana). Also, note that a lot of the stuff you point out are merely mentioned. I would rather know they exist than not know at all and then find out they do after I think I'm already confident in what I know. Thank you for calling it an information overload. I'm making you actually use your brain, so that is a good thing.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I think the suggestion is that your examples for 熟字訓 should be more common things. 暖 read as はる is exceedingly rare; I don't think you will ever see that outside of the 万葉集 or some kanbun (or possibly in a name). It has no place in lesson 4. I have the same opinion about 大臣 and 水面, which are words that many learners will *never* encounter in their entire Japanese learning experience. It's especially baffling because there are many common examples you could include instead, and there's nothing special about 大臣 that makes it particularly useful for beginners to see.

I agree with haru. However, I have seen otodo and minamo. I have actually seen minamo in several instances in songs by Gackt.

My computer crashed when I tried to get rid of some of the rare examples. So, it will have to be done when I get back from school.

To Jarvil: romanization, I have discovered, is the only way most true beginners can see Japanese. So, I limit it to beginners. However, I am open to cutting that down to half so it is not overly disadvantageous. The other styles are mentioned in a separate lesson. Again, audios sound like a good ide? It will just take time.

I dont think Gikun are that rare, just maybe the examples. I do think I will send the extra Katakana for foreign transliteration to a resource page. That will help. As for everything else, I think it is fair game.