

A Japanese language guide for analytical thinkers - mbrubeck
http://guidetojapanese.org/

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keyist
Thanks mbrubeck, great reference.

I highly recommend this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Step-Innovative-
Approach-Spea...](http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Step-Innovative-Approach-
Speaking/dp/0658014900) as another excellent resource. Written by an engineer
for engineers, with detailed flow charts for the various conjugation rules and
other aspects of the grammar.

The book lists the various common sentence structures then teaches you how to
expand the various fragments to construct more complex sentences. Somewhat
similar to learning via a CFG and deriving a parse tree. if you want to
absolutely nail your Japanese grammar, this is a solid logical way to go about
it.

Book's biggest drawback is that it is rather dry. You will need to complement
it with a book that focuses on vocabulary, idioms, and colloquialisms so that
you don't sound like a robot.

~~~
altxwally
The best books I've read regarding learning japaenese are 'Making Sense of
Japanese Grammar'. I recommend it a lot. [http://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-
Japanese-Grammar-Paper/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Japanese-
Grammar-Paper/dp/0824825837)

If it weren't for that book I would have never understood why there are so
many exceptions with verbs regarding the whole intransitive and transitive
thing.

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mbrubeck
This is the reference I wish I had when I was learning Japanese. I tend to
learn natural languages a lot like I learn programming languages: I get a lot
faster at learning once someone explains the underlying rules and how they
combine and interact.

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joeminkie
Thanks for this link.

I took ~3 years of Japanese (using Japanese for Busy People I - III) but I'm
definitely not as far along as I'd like to be.

This is the best replacement for a ~$300 electronic dictionary on the iPhone
I've found so far:
[http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290664053&mt=8)
(iTunes link). As it's been said, learning to speak vs. learning to read is a
whole different story.

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rgrieselhuber
Reminds me of Japanese: The Spoken Language, which is what I used to learn
Japanese. It's quite challenging at first but I can't think of a better way
for an adult to learn the language well.

~~~
gchucky
Sorry, I gotta disagree with you. Learning Japanese using an antiquated romaji
system (si vs shi, etc.) and not learning any kana or kanji won't get you very
far. What good is that when show up in Japan and can't read any of the signs
around you?

I saw Eleanor Jorden (writer of JSL) talk at Cornell, and a kid in the
audience asked, "I opened a book and saw a bunch of squiggly lines!" To throw
out a language's native written system is folly.

We used the _Genki_ bookset in school, and it worked pretty well.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
See my other comment. I would be willing to bet that more top performers under
the JSL system compared with top performers under a reading / writing focused
system will end up being much more successful in careers / life in Japanese
society.

Japanese people take for granted that Kanji is hard and are forgiving when
Westerners aren't that great at it, but it's painfully hard to listen to
someone speak with non-native intonation and poor grammar.

~~~
brianobush
Actually Japanese know it is hard, and focus on it like madmen. A top Nintendo
DS game for adults in Japan is a Kanji re-training game.

In any case, Kanji is so visual - until I learned it many words didn't make
sense to me. Knowing how to say it, but not understanding the real-underlying
meaning is not fun.

As far as intonation, Japanese is one of the easiest languages with regards to
that. Once you get the basics it is simple, but still you must talk with
others (Japanese club, co-workers, neighbors, skype, etc) and listen to real
Japanese (anime, news, etc.)

~~~
rgrieselhuber
I don't meet many Westerners that think Japanese intonation is easy. :-) It's
probably the most critical aspect of sounding natural when stacked up against
all other factors and can make or break the tone of the conversation.

~~~
gommm
I think Japanese intonation is very hard for native english speakers but it's
not hard at all for someone speaking romance languages (the sonorities are
rather similar to spanish I find...)

~~~
dkarl
_the sonorities are rather similar to spanish I find..._

This is very true. I grew up in an area where lots of Spanish is spoken, and I
learned a tiny bit myself. For me, Japanese pronunciation was trivial. My
teachers were praising me right off the bat. The only difficulty I have is
with my current tutor, who is bent on teaching me to pronounce the Japanese
r/l the way a Japanese would. (AFAIK it's not necessary at all for
understandability, just a pet peeve of hers.) I had a very different
experience with French and German, so I know I'm not especially gifted at
phonetics. I think the early exposure to Spanish was the key.

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caffeine
Brilliant! Where was this all my life?

I only wish he would deconstruct Kanji and the resulting combinatorial
explosion in the same way...

~~~
mullr
Use this: [http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-
Ch...](http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-
Characters/dp/4889960759)

And this: <http://kanji.koohii.com/>

The problem becomes tractable, and maybe even a little friendly.

Fwiw, the explosion isn't really combinatorial. It'd better if it was, because
at least that would be predictable. No, it's best though of as entirely
irregular combinations of a medium-sized number of components. But the
aforementioned resources help you deal with it.

~~~
brianobush
I can't upvote this enough. I went from 200-300 Kanji characters that I
acquired painfully to now 2053 Kanji characters using RTK in about four
months. I use Anki (<http://ichi2.net/anki/>) to do reviews, but the Kanji
koohii site is awesome for stories and has a nice active forum. I keep track
of my progress here: <http://kd7yhr.blogspot.com/>

~~~
donw
Are you learning just the meanings, or the meanings, kunyomi, and onyomi?

I ask, because I'm somewhere in between ２級 and １級 with the JLPT, and since
I've only spent a collective six months in Japan, it's a bit of a struggle
sometimes to retain vocabulary.

I'm finding that I have a very easy time with the meanings, and so I can
figure out new compounds pretty easily. For example, in the novel I'm reading
last night, 脱皮 came up, and although I figured out the meaning (a snake
shedding its skin, a crab moulting, etc.), I still had to look at the
dictionary because I couldn't remember the onyomi for the first character,
even though it's very common.

Reading out loud has helped a lot, and I'm going to start blogging in Japanese
about starting a company, but I'm always looking for tips on improving. :)

Newspapers still send me running for the dictionary, but I think that's
because I read a lot of articles about politics and business, which are very
kanji-heavy.

~~~
brianobush
at first, I focused on production of kanji from a keyword, e.g., discuss -> 談,
at this point there is no Japanese and I spent four months getting through all
the kanji. I still test daily and have gone through 21k kanji tests.

Currently, I am reading みんなの日本語 wherein I am focusing on sentence mining and
grammar. My current deck of sentences is around 800 sentences that I review as
well, wherein I review recognition and speak out loud. My level is currently
in between basic to low-intermediate. In the sentence mining I learn the
readings of the kanji in context and could care less about kunyomi/onyomi,
e.g.,幼稚園 -> ようちえん (or infancy-immature-park in RTK keywords).

The method I am using is summarized at: <http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com>
I don't follow it all, but some of it is good.

I studied Japanese for 12 years half-assed never getting anywhere. For the
first time I am making progress and I have a plan (which is the part that I
lacked before).

BTW, to retain vocabulary, I would recommend Anki <http://ichi2.net/anki/> it
is open and regularly updated.

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ersi
This reminds me of my Japanese classes in high school, my/our teacher had made
his own litterature for the class and we constantly played our
scenarios/theater/sketches. Trained Japanese "thinking", grammar, writing,
talking, interacting.. all at the same time. Landed me at "little of
everything".. I wish I paid more attention now!

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known
afaik

    
    
        japanese language = japanese culture

