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Show HN: Japanese Complete Book 1 Released
165 points by sova on Aug 15, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 99 comments
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.




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 を 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?


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....]


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 れ 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.


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.


I don't see the merit in using it for Hiragana/Katakana which are far easier to pickup with something like rote memorization.

That said for Kanji I certainly see the benefit of using mnemonics.


That's fine and you're welcome to think that. I would throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume the book is trash because it uses a technique you don't approve think is most efficient.


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.


I'm a bit confused by the "re"-hiragana example in the screenshot on the website. It says "れ" 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 "れ".


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 Dōgen (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 っ works.


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.


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.


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.


I don't know that the re in "red" and れ really sound nothing alike, though. If you want to reduce it down to something simplistic, "ray" would be a lot closer, if still not actually all that close.

For the r sound specifically, it's like 60% r, 30% l, 10% d. Most people don't struggle with getting it passable once someone teaches them that it's more about tongue positioning than anything. Have someone say "la" and "da" back and forth a few times, tell them to position their tongue touching the roof of their mouth in between the position it is for la and da while trying to make an r sound, and they'll probably be pretty close. And once your understand where the difference is on pronunciation vs an english r, you know what to start tweaking as you try to match native pronunciation.


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.


> 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.


I started studying Japanese in 2020 with 「みんなの日本語」(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.


>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?


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.


>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!


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).


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. みんなの日本語 starts with the very basics and builds from there. Same with Pimsleur (for the spoken language) which contains minimal English.


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.


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


> Can you explain how this works? This sounds like you were familiar with Japanese, not "started studying".

An important piece of context here (for anyone not versed in Japanese) is there there's effectively two sets of characters you need to learn, kana and kanji. The former is sort of an introductory requirement if you plan on learning, and the latter is something that takes most people years.

Kana is (for all intents and purposes you care about as a beginning language learner) split into two sets - hiragana and katakana. These are phonographic and cover specific mora (similar to a vowel), and both cover the same sounds. The corresponding hiragana and katakana often look similar, e.g. (ni) に and ニ, some are identical in both such as (he) へ, some are totally different such as (tsu) つ and ツ.

There's not that many of them, and you can probably learn them over the course of a week if you study diligently. Hiragana is the more important of the two to learn, and katakana is used somewhat similarly to how we would use italics or bold, for sound effects, for foreign loanwords, and similar.

Kanji is the other set of characters, and it's one of the tougher aspects of learning Japanese. ~800 kanji make up the 90th percentile of usage, but then you need another 1300ish to get to the 99th percentile, plus any domain specific ones. To further complicate things, there are multiple "readings" for quite a few kanji. Most kanji are imported Chinese hanzi, and many retain the original (or something close to) Chinese meaning as one of the readings, and a Japanese-specific one for another. The Japanese specific ones will often have hiragana attached.

All kanji can be written in kana. It's not generally done in practice for a variety of reasons - there are plenty of kanji that have the same pronunciation, it takes up more space, it's slower, etc. If I write out "Please buy some sake" (さけ) in hiragana, you won't know if I'm referring to the drink (酒) or the fish (鮭) without further context. Content aimed at people up through high school will frequently have furigana - the kana used for the kanji in question - above kanji, as will most content that uses rarer or domain-specific kanji in a situation where you can't expect the person to be familiar with it.

But when it come to writing beginner textbooks, they can keep things pretty focused, provide enough context, etc., to make it pretty feasible. There's lots of great electronic dictionaries now, so you can pretty easily look words up if you know the kana, etc.

>But how does this work without full immersion?

I think you might be overthinking it a bit - you need to do a little up front before you start working on vocab/grammar/comprehension/etc., but after that it's really just look at word -> look it up if you don't understand it -> figure out the sentence via context and dictionary results -> internalize -> repeat.

Cliff notes: Learning the kana, specifically hiragana, is basically pre-work to start learning Japanese in this sort of situation. I don't know if it's the right approach for everyone - some people might care more about learning some conversational basics before they go on a trip, or just generally need more immediate progress to stay motivated, but it is a method that is constantly self-reinforcing and likely works quite well for the people that can handle that sort of approach.


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.


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 :-) )


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.


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 )


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?


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/)


Does knowing Chinese helps when learning Japanese? My Chinese is already quite good, and I am looking for another Asian language to learn.


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.


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.


Knowing Chinese Kanji gives a lot of insight into Japanese Kanji, which is borrowed from Chinese. Some of the meanings are exactly the same


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.


Is it still in print? The usual book stores all seem to be out.


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...


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!


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.


Japanese resources really are the monad burritos of language learning.


Japanese resources are just ethnographies in the category of psycholinguistics, what's the problem?


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.


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...


Hehehe. Yup. Completely missed the joke.


I think you're onto something, but I have no idea what a monad burrito is.


"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...


Oh! This is an excellent article! I just favorited this comment.

Yes, language learning has an abundance of this. Everyone's learned a language so they all feel qualified to explain how it works or teach others.

Is there a name for that fallacy? It seems like a special case of the Dunning-Kruger effect (https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/09/why-my-fellow-physic...).


I’d love to have a poster with a monad tutorial in Japanese.


At the very least a book in the vein of Snow Crash.


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.


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.


I'm currently using Heisig's RTK; it's been great. I wonder if you simply don't like the system or if you think the pedagogy is ineffective/inefficient.


How many kanji can you read? Even after finishing RTK it will still be zero if not using real learning materials, at which point having RTK is a waste of time anyway. That "method" is bad because it skip the main difficulty of learning kanji, which is memorising the ton of readings each character has and the actual words using them.

Feel free to waste your time on a snake oil method however, I'm not the one impacted.


>How many kanji can you read?

That's not the point of the book; the point of the book is to build symbolic recognition and memory by hooking into words you already know. It's not there to teach you vocab, which is how one does learn readings and usages.

I will say that even about half way through, many kanji I see are no longer unintelligible blobs, but I can identify them with high accuracy and associate with a word. Sure, I can't read them, but I can recognize them, which is all I need to associate that with vocab with readings.

I already tried sitting down with kanji vocab and it wasn't worth it - I'd recognize kanji only from context and the general shape of the blobs, as if they were fuzzy in my mind. I was unable to actually write them, because I didn't recognize the components from which most of them are formed. Heisig removes those worries automatically.


> the point of the book is to build symbolic recognition

So basically totally pointless and a waste of time and money because this ability comes really quickly when learning how to write kanji. This can be useful when the phonetic value is learnt with the corresponding graphical part, but since Heisig skips pronunciations the whole method doesn't not teach anything really useful.


"Learning to write kanji" is something completely separate from learning to recognize kanji. The book teaches you how to write kanji. The usefulness fo the book derives entirely from association with memory you already have. You're ignoring the fact that mnemonics which already exist in your mind can be used to write the kanji.


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.


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.


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.


I don’t think I’ve ever heard the expression outside of the title of that one movie.


I've heard and even used it a couple of times, but it's not very common anymore.


> 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


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.


> is itself an incredibly awkward turn of phrase

I wasn't suggesting it, I was pointing out how awkward and nonsensical their phrasing was.


> 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.


> 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.


There's a difference from Ferris Bueller saying "If you have the means, I highly recommend it."


Right, it’s confusing, I first read it as “please don’t pirate our book”.


It just sounds like they phrased it a bit too apologetically.


> 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".


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?


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...


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.


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.

他没有工作。 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


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...


Cool website, any way you could like have a domain so I could send it to people. Looks kind of scary now


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.


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).


>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...


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!


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


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.


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!


I remember trying a wanikani chrome extension that did something similar (Wanikanify), but it was no good for my study style


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.


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.


https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=japanesecomplete.com

hmmmmm.


Just say what you’re thinking instead of leaving it up to the reader.


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


Even worse all of the previous hacker news links that they had posted are now behind a login page and can no longer be accessed. Terrific.


legitimately interesting things are not spam


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


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


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?


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.


Looks very nice! I'd be interested to read a comparison to GENKI, maybe someone will make a review later.


I can't tell from the linked page whether there's associated audio content, is there?


What are (better) differences between this book and Genki that you all consciously made?


Kanji embedded into English sentences is an interesting idea.




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