it reminds me a lot of Tae Kim's site

Are you trying to outdo him by providing better details of Japanese linguistics or by providing better help to the casual Japanese learner?

There's quite a big difference actually.

I have the tendency to take mental photos. The making of the lessons, though, has by far been the best way of learning Japanese for me. When I want to find something, I'll find it--with exception to the Korean textbook I've somehow lost. lol

Last edited by imabi (2011 December 17, 10:38 am)

Would you be interested in someone proof-reading your English? It's not horrible, but there are consistent errors.

To begin with, I actually can't make sense of this sentence at all:

- For my age and demographic background, you will see that only much more better things are to be done here for the IMABI way of learning language!

What does this mean? There are better things to come? Or there is more work to be done? Or something else...?

- I have become friends with a Japanese person who I know converse with frequently and my work has been reviewed by professors and other people.

Just a typo, should be "now" right?

- The more I work on IMABI, the more better I am and so are those who read my lessons.

How about: "The more I work on IMABI, the better I become. This is also true for those who work through my lessons."

- "For those, though, that will never relent in asking, it is Seth. I will leave it as that."

Should be: "For those who will never relent in asking..."

- The correct answer should be how did I start.

I think you mean, "the correct question should be how did I start."

- I then gave word of it in September.

I'm not sure about America, but this seems a strange usage of the idiom to my ear. I know you can "get word of", or "have word of"... but I'm not sure you can "give word of"... You mean that in September you "went public" right? Maybe "In September I put the word out" or something like that... Anyway, some of your other usage of idioms are also a bit awkward. I stopped at this point, but hopefully it's enough to convince you that it's worth going through your writing again, or getting someone to help you proof-read/edit at some stage, especially if you want the site to have a semi-professional vibe.

ps. Site looks great, I can tell you are working hard! I'll be back for sure.

Try to go to a university with a strong Japanese grad program so you can take the grad level language courses during your undergrad and transition right into your PhD after you graduate.

Hashiriya wrote:

gotta agree with captal.... i'm in 4th year Japanese right now and you have already gone above that for the most part. I don't know where you are planning on going to college in the future... but this college always looked interesting to me: http://www.wisc.edu/ I know they have a Doctorate level Japanese program there.

Hell yes! UW-Madison is a great school! I just graduated over the summer, but still living on campus.

Although, just by looking at your site, I'm pretty sure you'd surpass the 4th year requirements. I was abroad for those semesters, so I don't know what it's like, but judging by some of the people who are in it/come out of it...Yeah. Although they might not give you credit for it, and place you in 2nd year or something (I'm not sure how their class-skipping goes...)

For what it's worth, I didn't start studying Japanese until I got to UW-Madison...Took it on a whim because hey, I'm in college and I can take classes that interest me. I passed JLPT N1 in December 2010, which was about 3.5 years into studying. Although, I was one of the few who studied on my own outside of class.

edit: Also, the author of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese is the head professor. The other author already retired, but still comes to the conversation table pretty much every week.

Last edited by Asriel (2011 October 16, 8:49 pm)

imabi, have you considered the following option already? Once you got rid of the mistakes, you could self publish your work. There is nothing easier nowadays than to create .pdf or .epub files. You can then sell the book via Amazon or your website. You could also offer it for free and ask for donations. The structure is already there. All you have to do is to come up with a nice layout for the cover and an index for your book.

Last edited by Nagareboshi (2011 October 16, 9:48 pm)

imabi wrote:

I wouldn't call them mistakes. And even there were, I haven't seen anything that doesn't have the occasional mess-ups. Now, that is a very good idea and may look into that. Although, I do love the feel of an actual book. Actual books can cause harm to those few that don't take it serious. You can't do that with a pdf file. lol.

Besides, if I got hired by a publisher, I can make revised editions like actual textbooks do. That would be really cool.

Crap, still have homework. Until tomorrow afternoon, ja ne.

I am well aware of the fact that there are hardly any textbooks, websites, or other resources that doesn't contain any errors, mistakes, or whatever you prefer to call it.

This is probably a lesson you still have to learn. In life, if you don't take a chance when there is one, you could miss it. So even if you prefer actual books, and even though you could try to find a publisher, you shouldn't wait for too long. And if you prefer to have some actual books, for whatever violent deed that I just don't want to imagine you are going to use it for, you can always print it out. Or you could use a phone book instead.

imabi wrote:

Why is that? Do you really have to go that far?

I'm not sure what you mean by "go that far."  I'm not sure how I could have expressed my point by going less far. I wasn't trying to be mean or inappropriate.  Just saying that a lot of people who see a URL starting with imabi... will  see "I'm a bi ...".

And we all know how the romaji "imabi" would be pronounced in Japanese phonology, but 1. It's at the beginning of the URL, so we don't know it's supposed to be read as Japanese until after we read it, and 2. it's your own made-up word, making it even harder to recognize as pseudo Japanese.
And everyone knows how to pronounce the word "therapist," but that doesn't make the URL www.therapistfinder.com any less unfortunate.

Last edited by JimmySeal (2011 October 17, 5:19 am)

JimmySeal wrote:

And everyone knows how to pronounce the word "therapist," but that doesn't make the URL www.therapistfinder.com any less unfortunate.

*ahem*
http://www.penisland.net/

He may just end up like me with better Japanese grammar than English grammar

imabi wrote:

I want to make my site as clean as possible, and there is only so much my 17 year old mind will catch.