mentat_kgs wrote:

** Notice that after finishing these books you will be already be considered an "advanced" student in most classes. **

By what standards is THAT true?

Anyway, basically what he said. The very first thing you should do is learn the Kana, as they're utterly valuable and very easy (at least as a time investment) to learn. Dispense with the romaji utterly. Afterwards, as the list of books Mentat suggested implies, grammar is really the most important. You'll be picking up vocabulary along the way, but concerted vocabulary study really doesn't accomplish much if you can't understand the sentences that the vocabulary appears in. Once you both have a steady foundation in (lower?)intermediate-ish grammar (causative, passive, all conditionals, blah blah), and an understanding of the kanji through RTK, you can pretty much jump into reading whatever and just absorbing vocabulary though there. This may mean something like Kanji Odyssey or just outright immersion ala AJATT, whatever suits your tastes.

A good online resource to grab the drift of the more essential grammar is Tae Kim's guide at www.guidetojapanese.org. I'd add that, personally, I don't see that All About Particles makes a lot of sense until you actually are some ways into Japanese already. Maybe this is self-evident, but I'd always been given the impression it was some kindof noobie-book and was surprised to find that it took off on the assumption you already knew what you were doing. I suppose it's more of a reference guide. I'd also recommend Making Sense of Japanese, but that, similarly, is only useful after you have little bit of experience under your belt, as it's main purpose is to clear up a few points that might have been left ambiguous through other study. For just starting off, do stick to Tae Kim's and presumably UBJG (I haven't actually used it, but everyone seems to say so).

The priority of RTK vs Actual Language study is kindof a personal question. Do whatever doesn't drive you insane. I studied most of my grammar before RTK, then went through RTK straight while almost completely halting my true Japanese study. When RTK was driving me crazy, though, I'd go back to studying Japanese for awhile. Then, once RTK was finished, I jumped wholesale into immersion and I'm enjoying the results.

QuackingShoe wrote:

mentat_kgs wrote:

** Notice that after finishing these books you will be already be considered an "advanced" student in most classes. **

By what standards is THAT true?

Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar teaches up to JLPT 3 level. Most classes won't get you that far until past 202 maybe. My 101 class doesn't even teach て form until near the end of class.

I'd ignore textbooks like genki. Genki's preface is great, but the book has more english than japanese and it is very, very basic. Even in the end of lvl 2 it is basic. Also it takes too long to use kanji, wich you need to you after RTK so you wont forget them.

Like Quacking noticed, All about particles is harder than UBJG. But you should do it as soon as you can. The book is very short. I guess the whole book does not have 300 sentences and it convers the usage of most of japanese particles.

UBJG and AAP have the goal of covering japanese grammar, letting you free to do the rest yourself.

For last, sadly, what I said is true. That's how bad classes are. You should not compare you proficience with such low standarts.

I've been studying japanese for 2 years including a month in Japan itself, and I'm just now getting to where I can understand about 100% of an unsubbed anime, at least when they're not talking about anything too technical.  But damn, does that feel good

QuackingShoe wrote:

The priority of RTK vs Actual Language study is kindof a personal question.

I agree with QuackingShoe. To go further I would say that if you have been drawn to the Japanese characters and you like writing them, go straight for RtK, and continue with basic grammar and vocab as time allows. Otherwise, learn basic grammar and vocabulary as a priority, so that when you begin RtK you can appreciate how it is helpful and be more motivated to complete it.

The important thing to focus on in RTK is the story, not how well you write the character - you will get plenty of practice writing each primitive, so there's no need to write each kanji over and over again. I always write the kanji once, carefully, when I first learn it, then once every time I review it. Because of the repetition of the primitives, your kanji writing will improve very quickly that way.

As far as time - spend enough time with each kanji such that the story gets 'stuck' in your head, whether through vivid imagery or a catchy phrase (there are plenty of threads about which is better, but do what works for you, as any bad stories will be self-correcting as you will need to revise them as you review.

Ji_suss wrote:

Hey Manly,

Just thought that maybe if you give us your reason/motivation for learning Japanese, that might help us help you.

The plan you've got sounds solid.  I'd second the recommendation for "Minna No Nihongo".

Okay, here's a little list of what comes to mind:

1) I'd love to be able to speak/read/write another language (although I can, kind of, because I live in Wales, but I don't like the Welsh language, being honest).

2) I listen to a lot of Japanese music, play a lot of Japanese games and recently enjoy watching J-drama, so I'd love to be able to understand the lyrics to the songs etc. I'd also love to be able to read manga in its original form so that I can interpret the dialogue for myself, rather than relying on someone else's translations. Same goes for when I watch anime and drama/play games.

3) I like how the language itself sounds. I don't know if you get what I mean, but, to me, it has a nice flow to it.

4) I'd love to be able to visit Japan. It's a beautiful country with an interesting and rich culture; sounds like a blurb on the back of a tourist handbook, but it's true. Not sure I'd want to move there (as if I could afford it anyway), but being able to visit and converse with people/get around without a tourist's translation book would be enjoyable.

Uh ... well, generally I'm just interested in a lot of Japanese things and I really want to learn another language, so it only makes sense to go for one that you generally spend a lot of time with. Hope that helps.

I'll definitely add Minna no Nihongo to my list of books to buy.

ManlyTears wrote:

Also, this may seem like a really silly question, but ... I just read through the intro for RTK and it seems that it doesn't give the spelling for each Kanji in Japanese. It only has what each means in English. I'm guessing it's up to me to find out their Japanese spelling myself?

RTK 1 is intended to teach you only how to write and remember the kanji. The idea is that you first acquire the characters (2042 of them) and after that you start assigning readings to each of them. This sounds unnatural and even pointless for some people, but I would advise you not to listen too much to them. For lots of people (as I can see at this forum), the more they progress at their Japanese studies, the more they agree with the method used by RTK.

As for the keywords used by RTK, you have to keep in your mind that they are keywords rather than meanings. Of course, most times those keywords will coincide or at least be related to a real meaning of the kanji, but sometimes that won't happen. It isn't necessarily that the book is teaching you a wrong meaning, it is just that the objective of some keywords is not teaching you the real meaning of the kanji, but instead they are memory aids for remembering the shape of it.

頑張れ！

Last edited by Transtic (2008 September 26, 8:04 pm)

Transtic, it is not a matter of personal taste.

It is a matter of _strategy_.

RTK is good when it is done quick.
The optimal is 1 month. But doing it in 1 month is really hard.
But one should know it is doable and that many have done it.

Minna no Nihongo doesnt get along well with RTK.

It is a question of using your strenghts to fight back your weaknesses. After doing RTK your strenght will be kanji, and you'll be weak in japanese.

You'll need kanji heavy sentences to help you learn japanese better.

Heisig himself states in the book that he thinks that RTK will fail miserably in a classroom setting. That is because books like Minna no Nihongo take a very long time to teach you few kanji. You need to put your kanjis to use in order to not forget them.

Ji_suss wrote:

Manly, don't let AJATT dictate what you should do.  It's highly effective for many people, but it's just one path...

This kind of thing drives me nuts. If it's highly effective for some people, it's highly effective for everybody. The only difference is that people either
a, want immediate benefits over long term benefits
b, don't want to put in the time and effort
or c, think they can't do it because they're not doing it perfectly the first time.

It's not the only way to learn Japanese, but it is the most effective way we've found so far outside of Japan.

Last edited by alyks (2008 September 26, 9:40 pm)

Erubey wrote:

Aside from, for example, talking to japanese people and whatnot.

Which is sort of a moot point, since that would be lumped into AJATT anyway.

thermal wrote:

I would strongly recommend avoiding minna no nihongo. It's philosophy is to teach all the different ways a point of grammar can take as seperate points, rather than teach the underlying principle that binds them together. So you don't fully understand the grammar, you are just given lots of different cases of when to use it. Very hard to remember. I was really suprised after using it and then looking at the grammar points in a Dictionary of Basic Grammar, that all the splintered cases they had were simply presented in one section with the underlying meaning explained.

It also fails to teach the difference between は and が.

One book I would definitely get it "Making Sense of Japanese" by Jay Rubin. He explains all the grammar points that are difficult for English speakers to comprehend. You want to have basic grammar down before you read it though.

Oh and my advice is use Anki for reviewing RTK1 rather than this site.

I don't really see how someone at this site (where AJATT is so prevalent) can say that Minna no Nihongos principle is bad. Just like the sentence method tells you to simply use grammar is many situations and then use it properly from that, Minno no Nihongo does it in the same way. Minna no Nihongo is purely in Japanese, you won't get much better immersion. The chapters all make sense, you learn functional and important japanese which sounds natural.

は and が is the same IMO, you don't need to study the difference, you understand it from just using it so much. At our school, we didn't start studying the real grammar of は and が until after Minna no Nihongo, but it didn't matter because everyone allready used it almost flawlessly. The big chapter on 自動詞 and 他動詞 brought up the most important points. From getting all the immersion and all the personal use of は and が in Minna no Nihongo, the student learns to "hear" the difference, "feel" it. Just like a japanese person.