I never read English grammar and only read English books and I perfectly understand everything in the book. Or do I naturally learn the grammar of a language as I speak to it’s navie and read it’s books?
You may not need to read grammar books in Japanese, but you do need to learn Japanese grammar from a book. Many languages follow similar structures. English, German and French are very different languages but sentence structure and grammar follow similar patterns.
Japanese is completely different.
So if you don’t known what a verb conjugation like 飲まなければいけません means, it is going to be very hard to pick up from context. There are tons of things that are conjugated into the verb in Japanese that have no conjugation in English or the other way around.
Theoretically you could, on the condition that your exposure to Japanese happens 24/7. Unless you have the time and patience to make that happen just by brute-forcing your way to conversational competence, you’ll be better off learning the absolute basics formally.
With that said, strictly speaking, you don’t need a textbook if you don’t want it. Textbooks just tend to have things in a package ordered in a way that you can use what you learn immediately and build upon what you know. You could learn it through videos if that’s morep your thing. YouTubers like [ToKini Andy](https://youtube.com/c/ToKiniAndy) and the group [日本語の森](https://youtube.com/c/nihongonomori2013) have built their channels around teaching grammar.
The bottom line is, if you want to learn stuff at an okay pace, you really should learn it from a resource that already knows it and knows how to teach it. Sure, they base their lessons on textbooks and standardized tests, but you can still get stuff out of their lessons without having your own copy.
I think you need to read a book explains Japanese grammar because unless you understand the conjugation patterns, it is hard to be able to understand correct Japanese.
Conjugation rule is basis of Japanese grammar.
Personally, I also think understanding of particles is crucial for Japanese language.
I’m my experience (living and working here), picking up the language has taken just as much study and effort as it has exposure and use.
Study and practical application support and feed into each other very effectively when used in a good balance.
If you learn grammar before attempting to read books you will make your life a lot easier. Reading books in Japanese is a big challenge anyway with lots of kanji and vocab you won’t necessarily encounter in class/textbooks. Trying to manage this and also understand each grammatical structure as you go will be exceptionally difficult. Same with conversation: you may pick things up as you go along, but your experience will be richer much quicker if you study grammar.
5 comments
You may not need to read grammar books in Japanese, but you do need to learn Japanese grammar from a book. Many languages follow similar structures. English, German and French are very different languages but sentence structure and grammar follow similar patterns.
Japanese is completely different.
So if you don’t known what a verb conjugation like 飲まなければいけません means, it is going to be very hard to pick up from context. There are tons of things that are conjugated into the verb in Japanese that have no conjugation in English or the other way around.
Theoretically you could, on the condition that your exposure to Japanese happens 24/7. Unless you have the time and patience to make that happen just by brute-forcing your way to conversational competence, you’ll be better off learning the absolute basics formally.
With that said, strictly speaking, you don’t need a textbook if you don’t want it. Textbooks just tend to have things in a package ordered in a way that you can use what you learn immediately and build upon what you know. You could learn it through videos if that’s morep your thing. YouTubers like [ToKini Andy](https://youtube.com/c/ToKiniAndy) and the group [日本語の森](https://youtube.com/c/nihongonomori2013) have built their channels around teaching grammar.
The bottom line is, if you want to learn stuff at an okay pace, you really should learn it from a resource that already knows it and knows how to teach it. Sure, they base their lessons on textbooks and standardized tests, but you can still get stuff out of their lessons without having your own copy.
I think you need to read a book explains Japanese grammar because unless you understand the conjugation patterns, it is hard to be able to understand correct Japanese.
Conjugation rule is basis of Japanese grammar.
Personally, I also think understanding of particles is crucial for Japanese language.
I’m my experience (living and working here), picking up the language has taken just as much study and effort as it has exposure and use.
Study and practical application support and feed into each other very effectively when used in a good balance.
If you learn grammar before attempting to read books you will make your life a lot easier. Reading books in Japanese is a big challenge anyway with lots of kanji and vocab you won’t necessarily encounter in class/textbooks. Trying to manage this and also understand each grammatical structure as you go will be exceptionally difficult. Same with conversation: you may pick things up as you go along, but your experience will be richer much quicker if you study grammar.