dnichols@ti-csl (12/10/85)
>/* Written 4:54 pm Dec 2, 1985 by apteryx@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU in ti-csl:net.nlang */ >/* ---------- "Request for Beginning Japanese Text" ---------- */ >References: >Does anybody have any recomendations of good books for >teaching oneself Japanese? Please reply by mail, since >I don't usually read this group often. > > Brian Peterson > ...!ucbvax!apteryx I'm not sure about teaching oneself, but I am taking a class which uses a set of books by Naganuma. They seem to be quite good. They can be obtaineed through the Kinokuniya Book Stores in Los Angeles or San Francisco. I have seen another 2 vol. set - Beginning Japanese by Jorden which I think are good and they have tapes that go with them. (The tapes are expensive, though, and I understand the books are very intense grammar-wise). They can be obtained at Kinokuniya also. ================================================================ *hardcopy* *electr{onic, ic}* Dan Nichols ARPA: Dnichols%TI-CSL@CSNet-Relay.ARPA POB 226015 M/S 238 CSNET: Dnichols@Ti-CSL Texas Instruments Inc. USENET: {ut-sally,convex!smu,texsun,rice}!waltz!dnichols Dallas, Texas VOICE: (214) 995-6090 75266
gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (12/13/85)
>I have seen another 2 vol. set - Beginning Japanese by Jorden >which I think are good and they have tapes that go with them. >(The tapes are expensive, though, and I understand the books >are very intense grammar-wise). They can be obtained at >Kinokuniya also. That's a *3* volume set if you wish to include "writing Japanese". The text is programmed to begin at about lesson 9 of the first volume of Beginning Japanese. While I have not been a terrifically assiduous student of Dr. Jordan's texts (having had some contact with her at Cornell), my impression is that her method *might* be difficult to do alone, since the classroom situation she uses in her own FALCON (Far East Asian Language CONcentraion) program uses two teachers-one of whom *only* speaks Japanese and does no explanation of grammar, and one who does the actual explication in English. I have little to go on but my impressions of the students her program produces. The year-long intensive Japanese program seems to have impressive results indeed. -- She lost her luck/She lost her red shoes/she lost her wallet but she never lost her nerve./She wasn't lonely/no not much. -the Golden Palominos---------------------------------------- Gregory Taylor/...!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor /Madison, Wisconsin
edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) (12/13/85)
The best way to learn Japanese is to go to Japan. You can not divorce the Japanese culture from the langauge. You can't learn levels of politeness from a book, even if all the words are there. The first year course at UW - Madison uses a book published by the Japan Times ( I think the name is BEGINNING JAPANESE ). The second year course uses the grey set published by Havard Press or something like that. Its written by Hibbet and Saka??. 3 and 4 year uses no main text book but many short stories. Best advice is quit while your ahead! I took the last 2 1/2 years here. The work is equal to any of my senior level computer science classes ( Compilers, Operating Systems ....). In the people who lasted until the 4 year (2 from the original 1st year course) all execpt one had been to Japan and he went during the 4th year. You can learn Spanish or French in a fraction of the time necessary for Japanese. You can't learn Japanese without learning their Chinese characters. There are 2000 general educational characters, with another 5,000 others. A teacher of Japanese once said to friend of mine who took a semester of Japanese literature which required 3 years of Japanese (he had four years of Japanese), " You have a good start now. Don't quit". Where as I think you probably could learn Spanish from a book, I think a native or a fluent speaking person in the language is necessary to learn Japanese. (The profs here are Japanese Nationals) Good Luck.
breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel) (12/16/85)
[bibliography at the end] > Best advice is quit while your ahead! I took the last 2 1/2 years > [of Japanese] > here. The work is equal to any of my senior level computer science > classes ( Compilers, Operating Systems ....). [...] No, that is not good advice. Learning any foreign language is a rewarding experience, and it is likely to give you a new perspective on your own language and culture. I also disagree that Japanese is in any sense more 'difficult' than, say, French or German. Certainly, you can learn how to 'get by' in Germanic or Romanic languages much more easily than in Japanese. This is (presumably) because you can reason about 'sound shifts' and 'grammatical similarities'. To learn to express yourself fluently in a foreign language and to use it correctly in different social contexts is an entirely different matter. This takes years of study, instruction by native speakers, and familiarity with the foreign culture and society, regardless of what language your native language is and what language you are studying. If the previous poster were studying German instead of Japanese, the same comments would apply. After four years, I would say to him: you have got a good start, don't give up now, you may soon be able to appreciate some of the classical German literature. And even after many more years, he could probably still be spotted easily as a foreigner in even the simplest dialogue, and he would probably still not be able to understand the meaning and relevance of, for example, a German fairy tale fully. The grammar of colloquial Japanese is certainly not responsible for its reputation as a 'difficult' language. It is, in fact, simpler than the grammar of most European languages. Many classes of words don't change at all, and those that do, change in a very regular manner. Compare this to the grammar of, say, German. You must match gender, case, and number in well formed sentences. The German verb has a large number of forms, representing different persons, modi, and times. Often, the pronounciation of a word changes significantly when the word is used in a different grammatical context. There are different levels of formality in German, but they are distinguished mostly by the choice of vocabulary and alternative grammatical constructions, not by fixed, regular verb derivatives as in the case of Japanese. And there are lots of other examples why the German language can be a nightmare for foreigners. Nevertheless, German also has many features that make up for this grammatical complexity, and, altogether, German is probably not any more difficult to learn than any other foreign language. Likewise, there are, of course, features of the Japanese language with which foreigners have considerable problems. Most of these problems probably relate to the phonetic structure of the language. The number of syllables used in spoken Japanese is very small. This has (presumably) led to the introduction of a large number of multisyllabic words and, on the other hand, to the presence of a large number of homophones. Perhaps to make up for the length of the words, Japanese is spoken very rapidly, and, in addition, a number of euphonic changes are made. For the beginner, spoken Japanese is therefore difficult to follow and difficult to pronounce at the 'correct' speed. The frequent complaint that the use of Chinese characters in the Japanese written language makes it 'impossible' to learn is, on the other hand, not correct in my opinion. Chinese characters (Kanji) are composed from a relatively small number of constituents (radicals) with semantic and phonetic content. From the radicals present in a Chinese character, one can often not only derive its meaning, but also its pronounciation. Admittedly, the formation of Chinese characters is irregular, but probably not more so than the spelling and composition from roots of English words. Altogether, I would say: YES, go ahead an learn Japanese. If you can, enroll in a good language course taught by native speakers. If you can't, then try to learn the pronounciation from tapes and records. Get some good books on grammar and writing (there are some listed at the end of this article). Make notes in Japanese, try to read Japanese newspapers, &c. When you talk to people in English, think about how you would have expressed yourself in Japanese. But be warned. Unless you will live in Japan for several years, you will probably not master the language. This is true for any language and should not discourage you, just be aware of it. Let me just say a few words about my personal experience with learning foreign languages. My native language is German. Like any German high-school student, I began studying English in 5th grade. Later I took several years of Latin, French, and Russian. Currently, I am taking Japanese (incidentally, we are using Beginning Japanese by Jorden). I am now a fluent speaker of English. I began to acquire fluency only when I began using the language outside the classroom. Fortunatly, there are many opportunities to read English documents and to listen to English broadcasts in Germany. But most important for my ability to speak and write English were several visits to America, and my time as an undergraduate at Harvard. I found it to be a very rewarding experience to learn a foreign language. It has not only allowed me to communicate with more people, to read technical documents and fiction in the original, but also to begin to understand the cultural and social structures in a foreign country. Thomas. Well, this is also my first year of Japanese. The following is a list of books that I found interesting and/or useful. As a beginner, I cannot tell you much about the quality and style of the language used in the textbooks (our teacher says that even Jorden makes occasional lapses in style). Dictionaries: Takahashi: Romanized English-Japanese, Japanese-English Dictionary. Very useful dictionaries. Entries are entirely in Romanized form, but Japanese Kana and Kanji spellings are listed. Kawamoto: English-Japanese, Japanese-English Dictionary. More comprehensive than Takahashi, but less convenient to use for the foreigner. Schwarz, Ezawa: Everyday Japanese. Not really a dictionary. It orders Japanese words by social context and also gives some cultural background. Kanji dictionaries: Nelson. This is the standard Kanji dictionary. Rose-Innes: Beginners' Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Characters. (Dover) This is a classic, but slightly out of date. I like it, though, and it is very cheap. If you are lucky, you can get the old edition which contains the written forms of the characters. Pye: The Study of Kanji. (Hokuseido) A very helpful book. It points out phonetic relationships between Kanji. Wieger: Chinese Characters. (Dover) A classic, but applicable only to a limited extent to the modern forms of the Japanese Kanji. This book deals mostly with semantic relationships. Karlgren: Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino Japanese. Good if you know Chinese or are interested in the phonetic relationships between Kanji and Chinese, but otherwise not very useful. Courses and Readers: Jorden: Beginning Japanese. Jorden: Reading Japanese. Good and intensive course of colloquial Japanese. Unfortunately, the textbook uses Romanization, and the books are very verbose. Ogawa: New Intensive Japanese. I like this reader. Unfortunately, there seem to be no cassettes to go with it. Ono: Japanese Grammar. A useful book, but more advanced than the others. Lewin, Yokota, Fujiwara: Einfuehrung in die Japanische Sprache. Good introduction, mostly to the standard written language. You have to know German, though :-).