You can manage to do Genki and RTK at the same time? Don't you get confused? I think I'll do that too. I was in genki's lesson 10 when I started RTK and then stopped full time until I finish RTK. But I think I'll restart Genki.

I'll just remind you that you can also throw Genki away and start listening to Japanese audio 24hs/day.
I believe it is far more effective and much more fun. Of course you have to see it for yourself, some people dislike my choice.

Just don't let Genki distract you from RTK. RTK is real gold. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you start seeing results.

mentat_kgs wrote:

I'll just remind you that you can also throw Genki away and start listening to Japanese audio 24hs/day.
I believe it is far more effective and much more fun. Of course you have to see it for yourself, some people dislike my choice.

Just don't let Genki distract you from RTK. RTK is real gold. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you start seeing results.

Yeah... that too

Well said. I just have a giant loop of every anime and drama I have playing in VLC. If possible, I never spend a moment without Japanese audio. It's amazing how beneficial it is... even when just listening passively.

Last edited by sethg (2009 May 19, 2:27 pm)

mentat_kgs wrote:

I'll just remind you that you can also throw Genki away and start listening to Japanese audio 24hs/day.
I believe it is far more effective and much more fun. Of course you have to see it for yourself, some people dislike my choice.

Just don't let Genki distract you from RTK. RTK is real gold. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you start seeing results.

I think your heart is in the right place, but you're giving bad advice. Genki and other beginner level textbooks are good at introducing you to all the basic grammar. Without it, a person is going to be very confused by passive and causative verb conjugations. I think people give beginner level textbooks too much credit, but they're still useful. You just have to know when to stop using them.

I'm giving the advice that worked for me and a few more other people.

I know Genki has been in circulation for ages, but I believe Tae Kim's guide replaces Genki perfectly well.

But from my experience, grammar instruction is secondary, paling to actual usage of the language.

100 hours of listening is not only far more effective than 100 hours of Genki. It is also way more interesting.

Another thing about listening is that depending or your career it is easy to reach 8hs of listening each day, with little effort. All you need is a mp3 player and interesting content.

Building listening skills is something that takes forever. The sooner you start it, the sooner you'll understand Japanese speech.

Listening builds your memory for the sounds of the language. When you do sentences later, it will be easier for you to remember the readings, as the sounds will already have places on your mind. More or less like Heisig's primitives, sounds work as primitives for vocabulary.

Last edited by mentat_kgs (2009 May 19, 2:55 pm)

mentat_kgs wrote:

100 hours of listening is not only far more effective than 100 hours of Genki. It is also way more interesting.

That's definitely speculation on your part, and probably bad speculation at that. A beginner who is so new to the language that they are working with Genki won't learn anything from 100 hours of listening to incomprehensible Japanese.

I agree that 100 hours of listening is great, it will help a lot with listening, pronunciation and getting used to the language, but 100 hours of proper structured textbook study teaches you a TON. In 100 hours, you can complete all of Tae Kims guide and that leaves you with more than enough knowledge to pass JLPT3, grammar-wise. 100 hours of listening won't even get you close.

Last edited by Tobberoth (2009 May 19, 3:01 pm)

Tobberoth wrote:

A beginner who is so new to the language that they are working with Genki won't learn anything from 100 hours of listening to incomprehensible Japanese.

I don't know about that. Before I ever took a Japanese course, before I knew かな, I learned quite bit just just watching Death Note over and over again. If you listen to 100 hours, you're gonna hear the same word again... and again. When you hear it, look it up. Do this for every word you continue to hear and eventually, you're going to build a pretty solid foundation.

sethg wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

A beginner who is so new to the language that they are working with Genki won't learn anything from 100 hours of listening to incomprehensible Japanese.

I don't know about that. Before I ever took a Japanese course, before I knew かな, I learned quite bit just just watching Death Note over and over again. If you listen to 100 hours, you're gonna hear the same word again... and again. When you hear it, look it up. Do this for every word you continue to hear and eventually, you're going to build a pretty solid foundation.

I'm not saying you won't learn anything, but listen to yourself. "After hearing a word a thousand times, you will look it up and learn it". Yeah. How long will that take? Say... a hundred hours?

It's not effective, that's why textbooks etc were invented: It's much quicker. And don't bring up the baby example, babies listen to quite a lot more than 100 hours, and it takes them years to become good enough to read a basic textbook.

bombpersons wrote:

I have my ps3 (running linux) running a python script that chooses videos from my terabyte hardrive and shows them like a tv channel. So all I have to do is turn the tv on and I get Japanese input all the time

As awesome as this first sentence sounds, surely this would lead to an insanely high electricity bill?

Asriel wrote:

why it's　起こって instead of 起こて.

This makes for an interesting question: why is it 起こって instead of 起こて? Saying that it's because 起こる is a godan verb doesn't count, because that's something that's been made up at a later time to make it fit into the grammar.

mentat_kgs wrote:

I'm giving the advice that worked for me and a few more other people.
I know Genki has been in circulation for ages, but I believe Tae Kim's guide replaces Genki perfectly well.
But from my experience, grammar instruction is secondary, paling to actual usage of the language.

That's why I said your heart was in the right place. What you're saying here is contradictory to what the post I responded to said. You said to drop Genki in favor of RTK. That's bad advice because as a beginner, a person does need some grammar study. Your second post, to replace Genki with Tae Kim, is much much better advice. I wasn't disagreeing with any sort of sentence or immersion method. I don't want to start a holy war. I was disagreeing with the flippant way in which you responded to the use of a beginner textbook. I realized you didn't mean quite what you said. I wanted you to clarify, and you did.

nac_est wrote:

Asriel wrote:

why it's　起こって instead of 起こて.

This makes for an interesting question: why is it 起こって instead of 起こて? Saying that it's because 起こる is a godan verb doesn't count, because that's something that's been made up at a later time to make it fit into the grammar.

Because the continuative form of 起こる (classically yodan, modern godan) is 起こり, with the conjunctive particle て attached to the end it becomes 起こりて. Due to predictable & regular sound changes (音便) it became 起こって in modern Japanese. There was no way it could have become 起こて.

起きる's continuative form is 起き (it already ends with an i vowel without a kana change) so it doesn't produce the environment in which 音便 occurs, and thus there is no loss of a mora (り) with a replacement by a geminate (っ). If it was the case that the continuative form was 起きり, then the te form would be 起きって. You would also get 起きります.

Just because you don't fully understand verb groups (and their conjugation) don't say that they "don't count". Grammar may be descriptive, but language naturally develops rules which humans then try to describe. You might as well complain that there is no reason for water to be みず and not GNQ2IH.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 May 19, 5:26 pm)