Hello. I have been studying Japanese for some months now and have been struggling with how I should learn it. I’d like to ask you for some information.
I don’t know how studying works with you all, but as for me, I usually try to understand what I’m studying “as a whole”, in its unity, before moving into specific topics -that is, after I’ve had a little grasp of the bigger picture, I study the specific subject. Even if it’s only a superficial grasp of it, it helps me visualize what I will be studying and establish some order to it. In the case of languages, I first chose a topic, verb tenses for example, then see what tenses there are (and read a little bit of each case) and then I move on to learn each tense.
The problem is that, although there’s plenty of resources on the internet about learning Japanese, I’m yet to find one which gives such a systematic approach to the language. There’s plenty of resources on the internet about how to conjugate verbs, but I haven’t found a book or resource that explains when to use the verbs tenses and examples of its usage in an organized manner. For example, the plain dictionary form is used, as far as I know, to express habitual actions and future actions – together with frequency adverbs or future time expressions -, as in「よくえいがをみる」and「あしたえいがをみる」. It’d be nice to have a similar sort of explanation to the other verb tenses「て、た、ている。。。」, and the same thing goes for how to use particles, adjectives etc.
Even though there are very detailed explanations such as from Imabi, they are not specifically what I’m looking for: detailed, solid, but reasonably condensed and simple explanations of the language. I have the impression that Imabi works well for people who are studying deeply the language, as in linguists or very advanced students, but it seems to be too much for someone who just wants to understand the language well enough to read good novels. No offense to him or his website, but just to illustrate the point, the explanations there are so deep that they seem to begin in the dawn of time itself. That is a plus for very advanced learners, but not for beginners as me.
What I’m looking for is something along the lines of a book which I have used to study English: the “Advanced Grammar in Use”, from Martin Hewings, published by Cambridge. It lists what there is to learn by topics, and then you have an organized and solid explanation of each grammar point, followed by exercises: you can learn it and go practice immediately what you’ve learnt. They are detailed explanations, but practical and simple enough so that you can learn them in a study session.
I’m inclined towards going with this method of studying, if there is a similar resource in Japanese that enables me to do so. There is no such thing as a “complete” explanation for any subject, but I’d rather have one book that tries to organize things than one that doesn’t. I usually feel lost using Genki, for example, as it gives every kind of subject together in lessons.
Does anybody know any resource to help me with that? Thank you in advance!
13 comments
Not sure if there is such a thing. The issue always is that language is very interconnected, right? It’s very hard to learn any part of a language ripped out of its whole. And how do you decide which parts needs to be taught first?
It’s hard to break a language down to simple step by step components you can just learn one by one and stack on top of one another until it’s all clear.
For example, Japanese polite speech is grammatically very different from the rest of the language. And as such, it’s generally a terrible idea to learn early because it can confuse the hell out of you and completely destroy your understanding of the fundamental structure of Japanese.
But polite speech is EVERYWHERE in Japanese. You can hardly give any real life examples of any sort without seeing it.
So what is the right approach? Do you teach people about it early and confuse the fuck out of them? Or do you ignore it early, and have to point at every example polite sentence and go: “so this is something we’ll learn later”, or use only unpolite speech and go: “well, this is only half of how the language sounds and looks like?”.
It’s hard, man.
You kinda have to get a little messy with the system. You’re gonna have to mix and match stuff. Gonna have to tackle some stuff unprepared, gonna have to skip some topics until you learn others, and so on.
I looked up the English grammar book you’re describing and it is indeed a VERY advanced grammar book. Like, it doesn’t seem like such a thing would be useful for anyone who doesn’t already speak quite a lot of English.
You said you’ve been studying Japanese for months, so you must be a beginner. I question if such a book exists for English that would be functional for beginners?
The way I see it is, Japanese and English are so fundamentally different on a grammatical level that it’s not possible to explain beginner grammar topics without quite a lot of explanation.
That said when I first started, I went through some of Tae Kim’s guide to Japanese for the purpose of what you’re describing, to get a general idea of how the language is structured. I don’t know that it’s quite as brief as what you’re looking for, but it’s certainly not lengthy.
yeah, immersion & context-based approach. it’s probably not the answer you want, but it’s the closest thing i think you’ll find to a simple/effective system. it’s easy, it just takes times. but, not as much time as you might think.
I feel the minna no nihongo explanation book does just that: describe every grammar point in detail with examples. Then you can use the exercise book. Once I figured how to use the materials it was really easy to make sense. Follow the lessons
>they are not specifically what I’m looking for: detailed, solid, but reasonably condensed and simple explanations of the language.
This is a taller order than you think it is. There is no such resource, and I doubt there will ever be one given how difficult it can be to describe abstract concepts concretely.
Here’s a roadmap for you. Skim a grammar guide, memorize the most common 1000 words, then get about 3000 hours of exposure to the language over the next however-many years. That’s about what it takes.
> I usually feel lost using Genki, for example, as it gives every kind of subject together in lessons.
I used genki and I didn’t feel lost. It’s nothing to do with me being smart or something. Just don’t give up and if you get lost post your question online. The genki books took me 7 months to get through, by the way. This isn’t a “brag” post, this is, Genki is exactly the thing you want!
The workbook was boring but probably helped too.
You need to read more (and listen)
>simple, solid, and systematic approach of learning Japanese?
It’s like any other language: learn basic stuff like wh-questions, write a self-introduction, ask about the weather, etc. The only part where the learning process really differs from your typical Indo-European language is the existence of the so-called “kanji wall”.
>I’m yet to find one which gives such a systematic approach to the language
Integrated learning materials where things are picked and arranged in a way that they build off each other are extremely uncommon. The closest thing that you have to that are textbooks and grammar guides.
Alternatively, you could try taking notes on a notebook as you go and make your own, going over each topic. Then every X topics, write a summary and make up some exercises that integrate all the stuff you’ve seen.
>I haven’t found a book or resource that explains when to use the verbs tenses and examples of its usage in an organized manner.
You won’t find material of that sort geared at learners of any language. Learning materials usually teach the easy parts first while omitting the harder to grasp ones, then revisit old topics at a different time. The book you cited is probably for people who already possess a very good command of English.
>what I’m looking for: detailed, solid, but reasonably condensed and simple explanations of the language
So, a reference book of sorts? In that case, how about A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar? There are also intermediate and advanced versions. They don’t have exercises though.
I get the sense that you’re worrying too much about grammar. If you’re going to spend a lot of thought on how you optimize some aspect of your study plan, optimize how you learn vocabulary instead, because that’s what you’re going to be spending most of your time on.
(For what it’s worth, for grammar, I used mostly Tae Kim’s guide, plus occasionally the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar. I liked Tae Kim’s guide. Not so sure about the DoJG though.)
No offense, but just pick something and learn with it. Genki is a textbook designed for absolute beginners that is used in probably like 90% of university Japanese classes in the Western world. Perhaps there’s some remote chance that you’re one out of a million people who is incapable of learning from a text that literally almost everyone uses, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.
You don’t have to interpret every little sign of discomfort as a reason that you need to throw out universally accepted resources and find something specifically designed for you. Being uncomfortable is part of the process. Suck it up, fight through it, and you’ll learn something. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it’s true. The idea that every learner needs some specific method tailored to their special needs is a fallacy.
I think everyone is making good points, I just wanted to comment to say I think I understand a little of how you feel. I found myself feeling frustrated with Genki a little and that I too wanted to sort of look at everything as a whole , understand the most important parts as whole, and then circle back into finessing the more specific aspects of it.
So, for example, when i felt annoyed I decided to take a break and just learn every radical building block of kanji, something that I feel helped me understand and “see” kanji better now that I’m learning the first 1000 kanji. (Something I did through Anki.)
What I decided to do in the end was to not use genki perfectly, and to instead go through each chapter once, imperfectly but taking good notes, still doing at least 50% of each exercise, and just keep going for both books + At the same time read Tae Kim’s free guide which gives pretty brief but alternate explanations for grammar and goes in a different order than Genki, and ‘ like things ‘ are more together in tae kims guide than in Genki. I’m also waiting for delivery of the book A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar which I’ve heard good things about in terms of usefulness. So my current strategy is to use all these things together to get a good overview of everything and then go back through the Genki exercises etc and really work on outputting more. I know this might not be the best approach but it’s better for me then just being stuck because my brain really wants a birds eye view.
And then for things/tools I’d like that I can’t find anywhere, then I’ve decided I’ll just have to gather and make them myself and hopefully share it with ppl who are interested.
The Genki books are good to start your journey, work through them completely. Learn the most common 1000 or so words using anki, which has loads of sentence decks online (tango n5 or core 2k) do like 10 cards per day for 100 days for example. Learn about radicals in kanji and learn a couple hundred kanji using anki again, this is more to understand kanji than to actually learn them since you will learn them better in context anyway. Do these three things at the same time, after this you will be able to read using a dictionary which is the single most productive thing you can do. From here everything becomes fun and relaxing.
When you can read i recommend you read with a pop-up dictionary. Kanjitomo or any optical character recognition (OCR) is good for manga. Yomichan, rikaikun or something like that is good for browsers. Kindle has a pop-up function and a Japanese dictionary built in and mobile apps like jade reader are also great.
Manga can be found online by torrenting and there are sites like [kakuyomu](http://kakuyomu.jp) where you can read web novels that are written by Japanese amateur writers. [Here](https://jpdb.io/web-novel-difficulty-list) you can find a difficulty list for these web novels, obviously I recommend starting with the easiest.
When you start to improve you can start watching anime or dramas or whatever but I recommend to only start doing this when you can read pretty comfortably. If your vocabulary doesn’t allow comprehension listening won’t help. Listening is a seperate skill though so don’t get discouraged when you don’t immediately understand when you feel you should.
From here on more reading and listening until you understand basically everything is all you need to do. Eventually start speaking and if you want you can start writing. Learning to write kanji by hand is more of an art form than a necessity because of phones and computers though so that’s very much a personal choice. Basically when learning a language you need to get to a point where you can read using a dictionary and then just read as much as you can.
A lot of people like to use anki during the entire process. They take sentences with a single word they don’t know and then add those to their deck. This can be helpful to improve comprehension of what you’re reading but isn’t necessary. I personally would rather dip my balls in battery acid than work through flashcards every day though so i just read.
Edit: it’s a good idea to listen to podcasts when commuting, doing the dishes, working out etc. Reading is more productive but using the time you can’t read for listening is great. This will also help you decide when you understand enough to start watching anime or dramas.
I don’t think the thing you’re looking for exists exactly, but here are some resources that get closer to what you want than beginner textbooks like Genki usually do:
– **Japanese the Manga Way** is a grammar text organized by grammar topic (types of sentences, basic particles and their usages, です and だ, etc) where each chapter has brief but detailed descriptions of each grammar point followed by a manga panel illustrating that grammar point. I really love it as a resource for learning grammar; the only complaint I have about it is that it doesn’t have exercises
– Kodansha has a sizeable collection of little single topic handbooks: https://kodansha.us/books/browse/?sort=title&filter_category%5B0%5D=language. Personally, I own **All About Particles, The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs, The Handbook of Japanese Verbs,** and **Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia.** They’re all really great in depth treatments of single important topics, and I’d highly recommend all of them