[net.nlang] Request for Beginning Japanese Text

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.

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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 :-).