[HN Gopher] Show HN: Japanese Complete Book 1 Released
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Japanese Complete Book 1 Released
Hello friends at HN For the past 3 years we have been arranging our
physical textbook series and the first one has been published. You
can view sample chapters and see that the book is printed on
premium, photo-quality paper here:
https://japanesecomplete.com/book-1 In true hacker ethos, Japanese
Complete was a project started to address a need the founders had
and now it's turning into a tangible product so it is quite
exciting for us and we appreciate your continued support. All the
material in the first book is available with a free online account
on our online curriculum, only that it is much more beautifully
laid out for convenient look-up in the book. A much more compelling
representation down to the feel of the cover and the weight of the
text in your hands like fine silverware. Please only get the book
if you can afford it, because as mentioned you can also get the
same course material with a starter account at no cost to you. We
developed a lot of innovations for teaching and acquiring Japanese
rapidly and to-remember. Please ask any (sincere) questions here.
Author : sova
Score : 138 points
Date : 2022-08-15 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
| iandanforth wrote:
| Kanji embedded into English sentences is an interesting idea.
| teraflop wrote:
| First of all, congrats on launching a product. Without having
| ordered the book, here are my comments on your website:
|
| The signup page asks me to enter an email address, and says it
| will send me a verification link that will allow me to log in.
| But in fact, no link is sent, no verification is performed, and I
| can easily log in with an email address that I don't control. I
| can't set a password without paying, so there's apparently
| nothing to stop anybody else from logging in as me.
|
| It's hard to fully judge the study program, since only the first
| few lessons exist as anything other than placeholders. But after
| skimming through it, it seems like compared to other resources
| like Genki, the content is very heavy on kanji, somewhat light on
| grammar, and extremely light on vocabulary. Is there a reason for
| this?
|
| Also, despite your description of the course as "beginner-
| friendly", it seems like the early pages have a mixture of
| beginner-level and more advanced information. I would expect
| beginners to have a hard time figuring out which parts are most
| immediately applicable -- especially since you give them very few
| examples of actual Japanese sentences that use the grammar points
| you're teaching. For example, I find it hard to believe that it's
| in any way useful to tell someone "the particle wo can be used to
| describe motion transiting through a space" when they have never
| even seen a single real example of it being used in its much more
| common role as a case-marking particle. Basically, I get the
| overall impression that this course would be much more useful to
| a linguist who wants to study the language analytically, as
| opposed to a typical learner.
|
| Finally, it would be good to see some information on the
| credentials of the authors. As you're probably aware, there are
| lots of mediocre, amateur-level Japanese language resources on
| the web, many of which are created by people who are either not
| fluent Japanese speakers or lack pedagogical/educational
| expertise. What evidence do you have that your teaching strategy
| is an improvement over other approaches?
| tokinonagare wrote:
| The "kanji situated in an English context" thing is the most
| brain-dead weeby thing I've seen since Heisig's RTK, and that was
| a very high bar to pass. Same with the grammar mixing English and
| Japanese.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| says the person with a weeby username
| teraflop wrote:
| I wouldn't put it quite so uncharitably, but I agree with your
| skepticism. It seems very much in line with the way the
| individual lessons put much more focus on the kanji writing
| system than on the Japanese language itself, which IMO is a
| common strategic mistake made by beginners who are self-
| studying.
| elric wrote:
| I'm a bit confused by the "re"-hiragana example in the screenshot
| on the website. It says "re" is pronounced like the "re" in "red"
| or "ferret". This probably depends on which English dialect one
| speaks, because when I pronounce them, the "re" in "red" or
| "ferret" sound nothing alike, and neither of them sound like
| Japanese "re".
| BossingAround wrote:
| That's because a lot of native English speakers (not all
| though) do not know how to pronounce rolling R's. You won't
| solve that on a paper through textbook. "red" is the best the
| textbook can do, I'd think.
| katspaugh wrote:
| The Japanese R not being a rolling R doesn't make it easier
| either. It's a single tap. Americans are actually familiar
| with this sound in words like water and butter. The alveolar
| tap in the middle (the T) is close to where the Japanese R/L
| is produced.
| dymk wrote:
| Learning Japanese phonology from a written resource will always
| be a losing battle. It's alright for getting the most basic
| understanding of what the mora kind of sounds like, but one
| must practice with audio resources to improve their phonology.
| Pimsleur and Dogen (on Patreon) are great for this.
|
| It's super uncommon that you find written JP resources that go
| in depth about e.g. the vowel devoicing rules, or how tsu
| works.
| elric wrote:
| I agree, and it's unfair of me to judge it based on a single
| screenshot. I hope the book explains its assumptions about
| phonetics somewhere, so that actual learners don't end up
| confused.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Hypothetically, you have unlimited time but you need to learn
| Chinese, Japanese and Korean,
|
| Which order would you do in it?
|
| I've met tons of Koreans who can speak Japanese extremely well,
| along with one who really hated it. She was a good first
| girlfriend though...
| KVFinn wrote:
| >Hypothetically, you have unlimited time but you need to learn
| Chinese, Japanese and Korean,
|
| Any question starting from the assumption you will learn three
| completely new languages is probably the wrong question to ask.
|
| I mean, sure if it's your job, a planned career, or you somehow
| have family in all those languages, go for it. If not, you
| probably want to prioritize whatever language you want to learn
| the most, the one you have the most fun being in, or have the
| most need to learn.
|
| To answer your question anyway, I would guess Japanese first,
| then either of the other two after, since Japanese will make
| you learn both Chinese characters (which still help somewhat in
| Korean) and has grammar similar to Korean, so it should give
| you a leg up on either language after. But if you are in a
| situation where you meetings tons of Korean people, or in
| Korea, that seems like a way more important factor...
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| I agree. I was pretty fast at learning Japanese (passed N1
| after two years), 8 years later there are still tons of words
| I don't know, I can't write a lot of kanji, listening
| comprehension isn't as good as it could be. It's a lifelong
| thing. Props to anyone mastering more than one language!
| 999900000999 wrote:
| It's more like I'm from LA, and I had an apartment in K-Town
| once.
|
| I'm definitely planning on continuing with my Chinese
| classes, it's much easier in my opinion than the other two.
| And I'm meeting tons of Chinese people now
| olah_1 wrote:
| I was told to do Japanese first. Because you get grammar
| similar to Korean and Chinese characters both for free, or at
| least half off.
|
| Much of the Kanji even means the same thing in Chinese
| (different pronunciations of course though).
| tokinonagare wrote:
| I'd say learn Hokkien first, which as a Min dialect has a more
| conservative phonology, which will help more than Mandarin when
| learning Japanese and Korean. The rest is a matter of test.
|
| Also, I recommend using a website like the one I made (in
| alpha), which helps comparing the pronunciation of vocabulary
| of Sinitic origin:
| http://144.24.197.67/entry/e5b585e5-aba3-0000-0000-000000000...
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Cool website, any way you could like have a domain so I could
| send it to people. Looks kind of scary now
| tokinonagare wrote:
| That's on purposes for few reasons ranging from legal,
| mistakes in the linguistic modelling, approximations in the
| data used for algorithmic comparison, lack of pagination in
| the indexes, etc.
|
| Send me an email from the address found on the paper on the
| website if you want, so I can keep you notified of the real
| release.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I know Japanese and have tried to learn the other two. (Didn't
| have enough motivation to keep going, and besides, there is
| always more Japanese to learn...)
|
| Korean has similar grammar and some words share etymology with
| Chinese/Japanese, which is why Koreans can learn Japanese so
| quickly. The pronounciation is harder but hangul is not too
| hard to learn. I felt like I could have learned Korean pretty
| well given a year or so.
|
| Chinese has completely different grammar, tone system is very
| hard for most people, no hiragana/katakana (so even simple
| words like 'Chocolate' are written with relatively complex
| characters, which you have to learn to read and write). The
| kanji is mostly the same but there are lots of Chinese-only
| variants particularly if you go simplified (mainland China)
| over traditional (Taiwan etc.). I found it quite difficult,
| particularly the tones. There is a lot of regional variation
| too, and crucially, I couldn't find any interesting Chinese
| media and have no interest in visiting the mainland, so it was
| pointless to continue.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm actually taking Chinese and have been for a good while.
|
| The grammar is almost the same as English, with it actually
| being easier to say some basic things.
|
| Ta Mei You Gong Zuo . He (negation word / no) have job.
|
| Vs
|
| He does not have a job.
|
| Japanese, is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do.
| It's just hard.
|
| But I'm confident in being able to hold down a conversation
| in Mandarin one day
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I'd specify "Learn Japanese" or "Japanese language". I know it's
| almost a given, but I'd prefer the clarity.
|
| Thanks for doing this!
| pimlottc wrote:
| I agree with this. This post doesn't actually say what the book
| is about, as it could be able Japanese pop culture, Japanese
| history, Japanese life...
|
| Same with the website, the first thing you see is a giant video
| of someone fanning through a large book. On my desktop, I have
| to scroll down 3 pages before the first block of text, which
| again does not explicitly mention that it's a textbook for
| learning the Japanese language.
| tantalor wrote:
| > Please only get a textbook if you can afford one, as the same
| material can be accessed with an online starter account.
|
| I think you're trying to say "if you can't afford the textbook,
| then we have a free version available online" but it is written
| very confusingly.
|
| In English, "buy the textbook only if you can afford it" means
| the same as "affording the textbook is necessary to buy it". That
| is a tautology; that's true for literally everything: to buy
| something, you need to afford it.
|
| Also please add a link to how to get "starter account".
|
| https://japanesecomplete.com/create-starter
| naniwaduni wrote:
| > In English, "buy the textbook only if you can afford it"
| means the same as "affording the textbook is necessary to buy
| it". That is a tautology; that's true for literally everything:
| to buy something, you need to afford it.
|
| Having the ability to throw the money around is _not_ the same
| thing as being able to afford to spend that money. Americans
| are very credit-happy, among other things.
|
| Or imagine it says something more like "don't give us money if
| that would cause you to be unable to make rent/afford
| food/hoard candles".
| ylyn wrote:
| > That is a tautology
|
| That is most certainly not a tautology. Afford isn't used in
| the "have enough money to pay for" sense here; it's used in the
| "able to do without adverse consequences later on" sense.
|
| So what it means is that you are able to buy the textbook
| without having to struggle to pay for other things later on.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It just sounds like they phrased it a bit too apologetically.
| chownie wrote:
| > In English, "buy the textbook only if you can afford it"
| means the same as "affording the textbook is necessary to buy
| it". That is a tautology; that's true for literally everything:
| to buy something, you need to afford it.
|
| Is this regional? Where I'm from (UK) "if you can afford it" is
| commonly used to mean "if you have the disposable income" and
| they're using the idiom right here, they don't want to turn
| away people who would be interested but consider ~$80 too
| expensive for a book.
| troad wrote:
| As an English speaker, the original makes perfect sense to me
| and sounds far more natural than your suggested replacement.
| They're asking that you not spend money on the book if to do so
| would impose an undue hardship on you.
|
| I also feel compelled to note that "Affording the textbook is
| necessary to buy it" is itself an incredibly awkward turn of
| phrase. I wouldn't normally point this out, but if you're going
| to be giving out unsolicited stylistic advice, you may wish to
| start there.
| tantalor wrote:
| > is itself an incredibly awkward turn of phrase
|
| I wasn't suggesting it, I was pointing out how awkward and
| nonsensical _their_ phrasing was.
| layer8 wrote:
| Right, it's confusing, I first read it as "please don't pirate
| our book".
| mbg721 wrote:
| There's a difference from Ferris Bueller saying "If you have
| the means, I highly recommend it."
| drconti wrote:
| I've studied out of most of the well-known Japanese textbooks,
| and yours looks really promising. You've even added a new
| learning mechanic with the English paragraph containing
| interpolated kanji. I'm really interested to see what kind of
| mental associations that type of reading can build. Good luck
| with your launch!
| x62Bh7948f wrote:
| I remember trying a wanikani chrome extension that did
| something similar (Wanikanify), but it was no good for my study
| style
| GolDDranks wrote:
| You mention about innovations. As a Japanese major who studied a
| lot second language acquisition and did some empirical language
| learning research for my masters, I'm interested to hear about
| these innovations. What kind of stuff are you talking about? Is
| any of it research-backed?
| layer8 wrote:
| With regard to the "Kanji in English context" sample, I wonder
| how well that works when only a single English character is
| replaced by a kanji, because it's easy to still read the word
| without discerning the specific kanji. Meaning, you could replace
| those kanjis with random blotches and still have no difficulties
| reading the text
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Japanese resources really are the monad burritos of language
| learning.
| tantalor wrote:
| Japanese resources are just ethnographies in the category of
| psycholinguistics, what's the problem?
| solarmist wrote:
| There isn't a problem. To me it's more that a highly
| disproportionate number of programmers are drawn to languages
| and the Japanese language in particular.
|
| So I'm interested in why that's the case with Japanese, but
| not with German or Chinese as examples off the top of my
| head.
|
| The best explanation I can think of is the popularity of
| Japanese culture leads to a high enough exposure to the
| language to catch the attention of highly technical people
| who love finding and uncovering patterns in things. But that
| doesn't feel complete.
| tantalor wrote:
| Sorry I think that joke went over your head.
|
| _1990 - A committee formed by Simon Peyton-Jones, Paul
| Hudak, Philip Wadler, Ashton Kutcher, and People for the
| Ethical Treatment of Animals creates Haskell, a pure, non-
| strict, functional language. Haskell gets some resistance
| due to the complexity of using monads to control side
| effects. Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that
| "a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors,
| what's the problem?"_
|
| http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-
| and-m...
| solarmist wrote:
| Hehehe. Yup. Completely missed the joke.
| solarmist wrote:
| I think you're onto something, but I have no idea what a monad
| burrito is.
| superchroma wrote:
| At the very least a book in the vein of Snow Crash.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| "Monad burritos" is a riff on Brent Yorgey's "monad tutorial
| fallacy" post[1], a piece of lore from the Haskell community
| which speaks to the phenomenon of tutorials/learning
| resources published by people who've just barely learned (or
| haven't quite yet understood) the lessons they purport to
| teach. They're particularly wont to highlight snappy
| "insights" that tie together a concept _from the author 's
| perspective_, but that can be kind of useless or
| counterproductive to just hear about, since the work was done
| by grappling with concepts to arrive at an intuition, and the
| snappy bit doesn't actually _impart_ any intuition on its
| own.
|
| And there is a _vibrant_ ecosystem of Japanese learning
| resources like this. The landing page for this book sure
| smells like one! And this line from the OP:
|
| > In true hacker ethos, Japanese Complete was a project
| started to address a need the founders had and now it's
| turning into a tangible product so it is quite exciting for
| us and we appreciate your continued support.
|
| _absolutely_ sounds like a project started by someone who
| just learned a little Japanese ( "a need the founders had").
| It's a well-trod space.
|
| [1]: https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction-
| intuiti...
| haunter wrote:
| Looks very nice! I'd be interested to read a comparison to GENKI,
| maybe someone will make a review later.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I can't tell from the linked page whether there's associated
| audio content, is there?
| CiceroCiceronis wrote:
| This looks very interesting. Can you give a brief overview of the
| fundamental shifts in methodology that underlie your novel
| method, and justifications for why these are likely to be more
| effective for learners?
| bmalicoat wrote:
| I've been learning Japanese for ~3 years and tried a variety of
| methods. Of course there are better and worse ways to learn, but
| to me the most important factor is keeping my motivation up.
|
| Without having read this book, congratulations on putting it out.
| Making anything is hard. It's nice that you're trying something
| new (at least to me) with the embedded kanji in English.
|
| As part of my learning process, I decided to make a mobile app
| for learning kanji. It was quite a technical challenge for me to
| figure out how to let users draw kanji based on SVG in Unity -- I
| had to write my own SVG parser + renderer. Sourcing quality data
| for ~2000 kanji was also tough. If you want to check it out, it's
| free on both iOS [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kanji-
| book/id1532844605] and Android
| [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bmalicoat....]
| throwntoday wrote:
| Having taken a quick look at this book I have to say it seems
| incredibly dumbed down for no reason. The example of showing a
| ferret to remember the sound of re is hilarious.
|
| For anyone wanting to seriously learn Japanese I recommend
| passing on this strange magazine formatted pseudo textbook and
| just buy the tried and true Genki.
| bsder wrote:
| Different people learn differently. I always found mnemonics
| useless, but some people preferred them.
|
| The most important thing is to use whatever keeps you
| motivated. "Keeping on" is 90% of the battle.
| PaulsWallet wrote:
| You may disagree with it but mnemonics are very helpful for
| remembering information that has no relationship to things
| you already know. I used my own set of mnemonics to learn
| hiragana and katakana when I first started.
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| I started studying Japanese in 2020 with [minnanoRi Ben Yu ]
| (Minna no Nihongo). The book is entirely in Japanese and only
| assumes that you can read hiragana/katakana and have access to a
| dictionary for JP -> your native language. The book also includes
| an audio CD of each of the lessons to practice listening
| comprehension.
|
| I used the two books, audio CDs, and an excellent YouTube channel
| called "Nihongoal" that provides supplementary lessons to each
| chapter in English.
|
| In 2 years of daily study I have a better command of Japanese
| than I did in Chinese, my college major... Admittedly the Chinese
| study has helped me immensely with Kanji.
|
| When you study Japanese in Japanese you are constantly
| reinforcing prior knowledge while acquiring new concepts. Minna
| no Nihongo does an excellent job of pacing these concepts in a
| way that is powerful but not overwhelming to a foreigner learning
| the language.
|
| I guess I am just a bit apprehensive to teaching Japanese in
| English because of how much efficiency you loose in that concept
| reinforcement. If you want to learn words and phrases this
| approach might work, but if you want to actually speak the
| language I feel that its going to take a lot longer.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _I started studying Japanese [...] assumes that you can read
| hiragana /katakana_
|
| Can you explain how this works? This sounds like you were
| familiar with Japanese, not "started studying".
|
| > _When you study Japanese in Japanese_
|
| I've heard this before (with other languages, as well) but just
| can't wrap my head around it. The only example I can think of
| is full immersion (e.g. moving to Japan or wherever you're
| learning the language) and being surrounded by it 24/7, where
| context clues sort of boot-strap you into learning more. But
| how does this work without full immersion?
| dymk wrote:
| One can learn the kana in a few weeks to a month, depending
| on how diligently one studies. It's akin to learning a new
| alphabet (although with quite a few more characters), but
| it's almost fully phonetic. Know the sounds the mora make,
| and you can (basically) pronounce the word, and certainly be
| able to look up the meaning in a dictionary. It's the first
| step to learning the written language without actually
| knowing what anything means, and lets you bootstrap Kanji
| learning as well.
|
| Learning Japanese through immersion doesn't necessarily mean
| getting thrown in the deep end watching TV, reading
| newspapers, etc. A just-starting beginner would understand
| none of that.
|
| This other key to language acquisition is comprehensible
| input, meaning you're just barely pushing the boundaries of
| what you're reading / hearing. Adult learners have decades of
| context to lean on from their native language, and so a good
| language learning resource will leverage that knowledge as
| well. minnanoRi Ben Yu starts with the very basics and
| builds from there. Same with Pimsleur (for the spoken
| language) which contains minimal English.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I guess I'm just getting hung up on "started learning",
| which comes a few weeks or month after already learning all
| of the characters. It sounds like the OP is suggesting to
| learn hiragana/katakana first, then continue with their
| recommended book.
|
| Which makes total sense! And the OP probably left it out
| because that's the sensible thing to do. But as someone who
| only speaks one language, I was a bit confused on where I
| would _actually_ start.
| dymk wrote:
| I was in your shoes a year ago! I'm reading at about an
| N4 level now, and have some very basic speaking ability.
|
| It's daunting, but many people have done it. The key for
| me was having _lots_ of different resources to learn
| from. I 've found that everything teaches things a little
| bit differently, and everything skips something that
| another resource doesn't. Some explanations make more
| sense than others for certain facets. And of course, the
| repetition is good (and required).
|
| I'd recommend:
|
| - Write down your goals for what you want to do. Do you
| want to converse with other Japanese speakers? Write the
| language? Do you want to read Japanese? Be able to visit
| the country and communicate? Watch anime without
| subs/dubs? How you answer these questions will shape the
| resources you focus your time on. To build a regular
| habit of studying, you want to feel you're making steady
| progress towards a goal that you're passionate about.
|
| - Learn hiragana/katakana. You'll not be able to make
| progress without this. I used a combination of this
| YouTube video [1] along with the "Japanese!"
| hiragana/katakana iOS app.
|
| - If you want to read the language, start studying a
| Kanji deck.
|
| - If you want to speak/listen in JP, start an audio
| course such an Pimsleur.
|
| - Make your way through Minna no nihongo and/or Genki I.
|
| - Google around for Japanese graded readers for
| beginners, to practice reading "real" content that has
| been synthetically simplified.
|
| - Start reading community posts in Japanese language
| learning communities, and see what resources are being
| shared around and how people are studying. You'll
| naturally find a good fit, eventually.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p9Il_j0zjc&t=18s
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| 1. Hiragana/katakana can be learned in a week or two using
| flash cards and spaced repetition. It can be mastered through
| reading Japanese text for a few months to the point where you
| stop thinking about it. You don't need a $77 book to learn
| this, its just brute force memorization. I didn't know any
| other Japanese going in besides this.
|
| 2. Full immersion while ideal is impractical for most people
| interested in studying this language. You can still give
| yourself full immersion while learning anywhere in the world
| by using Japanese learning resources and limiting your
| English use to the minimum necessary (dictionary lookups,
| explanations for particularly troublesome concepts).
|
| By the end of MNN 1 going into MNN 2 I swapped from a JP ->
| EN dictionary to a JP only dictionary. If I didn't understand
| a word from context in the book I would look it up in the
| dictionary, if I didn't know a word in the definition I would
| look that up and so on until I understood using only
| Japanese.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _I didn 't know any other Japanese going in __besides
| this__._
|
| I think that's where I was hung up. It makes total sense to
| first start with learning hiragana/katakana with whatever
| preferred method, then move onto something like the book
| you suggested. Rather than just starting with the book you
| suggested. And, I'm sure that point is obvious to many and
| why you left it out. But, as someone who only knows one
| language, it wasn't as obvious to me.
|
| Thanks for the tips!
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| Sure!
|
| One more note that you may or may not be aware of:
|
| Culture and language are closely intertwined, they drive
| each other, and Japanese is certainly no exception to
| this.
|
| Japanese isn't spoken as literally or certainly as
| English is, especially to strangers. They use this system
| called "Keigo" which you'll find translated as
| "politeness" but that doesn't really completely encompass
| the idea. It is just a way of speaking in certain
| situations that covers your bases. Japanese is a language
| that is often stereotyped as needing to say a lot to say
| a little and this is often true.
|
| Its useful to try and learn this intuitively. Hear and
| see it used often to the point that you just know the
| idea being communicated. Its difficult to translate many
| of these concepts to English because of how outside of
| our cultural sphere they often are (which is why I
| believe trying to teach them in English from the
| beginning is a fools errand, they must be learned
| contextually).
| [deleted]
| toto444 wrote:
| If you like material that teaches Japanese in Japanese you
| might like this website :
| https://drdru.github.io/stories/intro.html . It uses emoji to
| introduce new words, uses them over and over in simple short
| stories to reinforce them and let you guess the grammar from
| the context.
|
| (Disclaimer : it's mine :-) )
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| I looked through the first 4 pages and its cute! I think this
| could certainly be helpful to someone getting their feet wet
| with really studying the language.
|
| One of the reasons I tend to hold MNN as gospel is the way
| that it doesn't treat you like a child. The conversations are
| very realistic to what you would hear in modern spoken
| Japanese, with Keigo and all of the clunkiness that comes
| with it from lesson 1.
|
| I noticed your disclaimer: "Despite being in the form of
| stories the Japanese used is beginner Japanese and may not
| reflect the way native speakers would express themselves. "
|
| If its not used by native speakers, why learn it this way?
| Maybe they could understand you if you spoke like this, but
| you would be unlikely to understand them without the need to
| speak to you as if you were 4 years old.
| toto444 wrote:
| You forgot the second part of this disclaimer is : "As the
| vocabulary and grammar expands it becomes closer to native
| speech.".
|
| > If its not used by native speakers, why learn it this
| way?
|
| Starting with small simplified building block and then
| refining them is pretty much what every textbook of every
| discipline out there does isn't it?
|
| (Not saying MNN does not do what you claim. I know it is
| really good but have never used it )
| bovermyer wrote:
| How would you get a grasp of grammar rules, though? And things
| like counting-words (e.g., "-kai")?
|
| And how do you know if your understanding of a given sentence
| is correct?
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| Grammar rules start by learning verb conjugations, these can
| be learned through tables, although there are some exceptions
| you will have to learn individually. This is an excellent
| free tool for practicing those (not mine, just something I've
| used): https://baileysnyder.com/jconj/
|
| For structural grammar there are a lot of different routes to
| go about this, MNN teaches these pretty well in my opinion. I
| tried using bunpro (https://bunpro.jp) with mixed results but
| I know some people who swear by it.
|
| As for knowing if your understanding of a sentence is
| correct, if I have doubts at my level I assume that I am
| likely incorrect. I typically google the part of the sentence
| that I am unsure about and either look at images or posts
| that use it in different contexts. Reverso context is also
| useful for this (https://context.reverso.net/translation/)
| timr wrote:
| Also learned from MNN. It's worth pointing out that there are
| companion books that explain the grammar points in English
| (also many other languages - different books for different
| languages). Here's a link to eBay for the companion book for
| the first volume in English (couldn't find it on amazon, for
| whatever reason):
|
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/ha0793-Minna-no-Nihongo-1-English-T...
|
| The grammar note books are invaluable...MNN can be a little
| challenging if you don't think like a Japanese person, or have
| a native teacher to help decipher the content. But they're also
| dangerous, because you can spend too much time in them at the
| expense of the actual textbook (I know this from direct
| experience).
|
| MNN is not my favorite (I recommend Genki for native English
| speakers), but I agree 100% with OP about learning Japanese
| from an English-language book. It is a waste of time. Learn
| hiragana and katakana (you can do this in a couple weeks) and
| dive into full grammatical immersion. There is no other way.
| elric wrote:
| Is it still in print? The usual book stores all seem to be out.
| timr wrote:
| Yes. You can get it on amazon, or at Kinokuniya, if you have
| one near you. It's also ubiquitous in Japan.
|
| There are also PDFs of it floating around the internet...
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| This is the same reason a lot of alternative JP learning
| resources recommend _against_ traditional resources (sometimes
| even native textbooks, tangibly related) and favor sheer
| immersion instead. It 's the same way many non-English speakers
| learned English as kids before their schools even start
| teaching them English. Formal education can still fill in the
| gaps where necessary or cover areas not usually covered in
| daily life, but it tends to work better as a supplement rather
| than the bulk of learning.
|
| I too am against it in general, and given the sheer volume of
| vocabulary and little quirks required to understand Japanese,
| you'd probably do yourself a massive disservice waiting to dive
| in any longer than necessary.
| drshapeless wrote:
| Does knowing Chinese helps when learning Japanese? My Chinese
| is already quite good, and I am looking for another Asian
| language to learn.
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| Only with Kanji. Many share the same meaning, and onyomi
| reading often sounds a little bit like modern mandarin, but
| the kunyomi readings are exclusively Japanese and you'll have
| to memorize those separately (Wanikani was helpful for me in
| this).
|
| For grammar you are out of luck. Japanese is a much more
| grammar heavy language than Chinese, typically much more
| complex.
| crumpled wrote:
| Knowing Chinese Kanji gives a lot of insight into Japanese
| Kanji, which is borrowed from Chinese. Some of the meanings
| are exactly the same
| Freak_NL wrote:
| For written Japanese, a lot (for the kanji). For spoken
| Japanese, it helps with the words that were borrowed from
| Chinese -- and this is a lot, perhaps 50%. But pronunciation
| is, obviously, recognizable, but differing. For such words
| (those that consist of characters that are pronounced using
| the so called _on-yomi_ reading), you 're likely to pick on
| the sound conversion from Chinese to Japanese and vice versa,
| and at that point make educated guesses to the meaning of
| those words. That leaves pure Japanese readings of words of
| course (which includes almost all verbs excluding the nouns
| that are verbified by suffixing with an inflection of _suru_
| ), but it helps in the basis.
| slater wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=japanesecomplete.com
|
| hmmmmm.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Just say what you're thinking instead of leaving it up to the
| reader.
| slater wrote:
| Eh, just that this guy ALWAYS spams their site. Hasn't done
| so in a while, then started up again a day or so ago. See
| link in GP, and then also:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32464586
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32464171
| chimineycricket wrote:
| What are (better) differences between this book and Genki that
| you all consciously made?
| lowatt wrote:
| Authors may be "language pros" but the content can use more proof
| reading. One (trivial) example:
|
| > Kanji are ideograms imported lock, stock, and barrel from
| __mainland Asia__ into Japan over hundreds of years, starting
| around the 5th century, followed by Buddhism in the 6th century.
|
| "mainland Asia"? This makes me laugh. Technically not totally
| wrong, but, do people really say that? Won't people from India
| get offended? If someone (e.g, a child) googles "mainland Asia",
| the first result is Indochina. Did Japan import Chinese
| characters from Indochina in the 5th century? I believe a
| textbook should be clear, straightforward, and shouldn't
| obscure/blur facts.
| BossingAround wrote:
| To me, the biggest problem with the sentence is "lock, stock,
| and barrel," which won't be understandable to a number of non-
| native speakers.
|
| I don't know who the target audience is, but not having non-
| native speakers in mind seems like a pretty big oversight to
| me.
|
| Mainland Asia is, of course, pretty bad as well.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I don't think I've ever heard the expression outside of the
| title of that one movie.
| solarmist wrote:
| I've heard and even used it a couple of times, but it's not
| very common anymore.
| hurflmurfl wrote:
| As a non-native speaker, I don't think I've ever seen this
| expression, but one can easily guess what it means.
| Enumerating bits of the whole as a way to emphasize the
| wholeness, I think, might be common in many languages.
|
| Regarding mainland Asia, I just understand it as "not island"
| Asia.
| SnooSux wrote:
| As a very casual Japanese studier (450 day streak on Duolingo),
| this looks interesting! I like having kanji etymology explained
| or having them broken down into their constituent parts, even if
| it's not strictly the most efficient way to memorize.
|
| The kanji in English sentences is intriguing, I'm not sure how
| effective it would be.
|
| Can you post a complete table of contents so I can see if it
| makes sense for me to purchase? Do you have a timeline for the
| next book release? I may be more interested in that.
| tokinonagare wrote:
| > I like having kanji etymology explained
|
| Then I recommend this dictionary, which has an edition focused
| on kanji too: https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/ The team who
| build that knows what it talks about, and it contains real
| etymologies, not fake ones based on the current graphical
| shapes of characters.
| xingped wrote:
| Between your book and your course on your website, I must say I'm
| pretty disappointed that no prices are listed anywhere unless you
| go to a stripe checkout page.
| x62Bh7948f wrote:
| might be helpful for beginners. after learning Japanese for a
| while I've developed some "tastes" (I don't know how to put it).
| reading the sample explanations on your website, writing Japanese
| vocabulary in romaji feels wrong. I'd go for having it in
| hiragana for simplicity (bunsetsu jars...) I don't know how
| useful the -kanji situated in english context- would be. in my
| experience having the Japanese context is way better to learn
| kanji, once one has learned enough vocabulary. The kanji origin
| story (with the proto-kanji, chinese writing, etc) might be
| better for advanced courses (is it available for all kanji on
| your book?) I'd try to avoid having native language "crutches" as
| much as possible.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I've studied Japanese for 10 years and would never recommend
| any material that uses romaji. Hiragana takes only a few weeks
| to get familiar with, and avoids mixing up Japanese
| pronounciation with English.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| I like the format and colors in your book. Well done! I believe
| this would have been helpful to me at the beginning of my
| Japanese studies. I do have some questions, if you don't mind:
|
| 1. Does your book take into account the frequency with which
| words are used in Japanese? I've found frequency dictionaries are
| an excellent place to start learning languages because you begin
| by learning the most commonly used words first (maybe you address
| this on your website and I just missed it).
|
| 2. I've seen English study materials in Japan use the same
| strategy you're using when you embed kanji into English
| sentences. One problem I've noticed is that some Japanese people
| studying from those guides will inject Japanese particles into
| their English sentences. For example, "Me and my friends wa ate
| lunch together." Have you noticed this issue in reverse with your
| book's strategy?
|
| 3. Have you found including archaic kanji to be helpful or
| confusing for new learners?
|
| I love the Japanese language. Thanks for your efforts it making
| it more accessible to people. Best of luck on the series. I hope
| you do well with it.
| vr46 wrote:
| Haven't touched Japanese since I studied it at university for
| several years. Useless that I am, I didn't use it or practice it
| again and can't remember anything after 30 years. I've bought the
| book :D
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