Reddit reviews An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese, Vol. 1 (English and Japanese Edition)

You're starting on a big journey here. Bigger than you might realize. If you want to see this through to the point where you'll be able to understand native Japanese speakers without a problem, it's going to be tough, and you're going to want to give up more than once because it feels like you're just not getting anywhere. I know this because I've been through it many times myself to get through where I am today. But if you persevere, you'll get better, and eventually one day you'll realize "holy shit, I can understand this stuff without translating it back into English", and that's where the fun begins.

The first thing you need to do is familiarize yourself with the Japanese writing system and how each kana (read that link to find out what "kana" are) sounds. Romaji (the Japanese name for roman characters, like what you're reading right now) when using Japanese is a big no-no, for several reasons, not all of which are obvious or even understandable to someone who has absolutely no knowledge of the language. Basically, relying on romaji will slow your acquisition of Japanese reading skills and fuck with your pronunciation. Starting from day one, promise yourself to never use romaji when studying Japanese. It's probably going to be annoying starting off with studying kana by rote and not learning anything about Japanese, but if you keep at it you can memorize it in a week.

Here's what I did to learn kana: I printed off the incredible hiragana and katakana charts (you can ignore wi and we on both sides, by the way; they're no longer used) on Wikipedia and taped them up on my wall. I then copied them down (that's a picture of the first Japanese I ever wrote, by the way) onto a notebook. After that, every day, a couple times a day, I would take a character that I had not yet memorized and decided to work on it. I would look at it once, then write it down on a piece of paper a couple dozen times, then move on to the next character. Then I'd wait a few minutes, just long enough for the shape of the character to pass out of my immediate short-term memory, and try writing it down again without looking up the shape. If I failed and couldn't remember it, that was okay, I'd just start that character over again. Every time I "succeeded" on remembering the shape of a character without looking it up, I'd do the same thing but increase the interval a little bit. First time, maybe only a minute between. The second time, five minutes, then ten, half an hour, etc. until I had it completely memorized. It sounds like it takes a lot of time, but actually writing the characters a few dozen times only takes a minute or two, and in between, during the "forgetting" periods, you can do whatever you want; play a game, browse reddit, whatever. It took me about a week and a half to memorize hiragana and katakana, but I had a lot of free time during that period. It's okay if it takes you longer, but you need to get this, the most basic of basics, down before you can proceed. Trust me on this.

After you've done that, you can start studying grammar and kanji. There are a ton of great sources for grammar, my favorite being Tae Kim's guide, a part of which I linked earlier. As great and free as it is, though, it's not enough on its own; I recommend a textbook to go with. The only one I've personally tried is genki, which while good, has a few downsides that are difficult for beginners to notice. The biggest one is a focus on formal rather than casual Japanese. Luckily, most of them can be fixed by simply using a second source, such as the grammar guide I linked above.

You'll want to start studying kanji the moment you finish with kana, and for that, I recommend kanjidamage. It also has a great introduction explaining why so many Japanese classes and textbooks suck, and I recommend you give that a read before you start your studies. The road to kanji mastery isn't difficult, but it is very long. However, if you start it early and keep at it every day, even if it's only one character per day, before you know it you'll have hundreds memorized.

After you've got the basics down, you'll need more things like ways to find practice partners or reading and listening material, but that's still a long way off. The beginning has been laid before you, and the rest is up to you. 頑張れ！

Hi (or should I say こんにちは?),

I'm an American took Japanese for a year in middle school, 4 years in high school, and around 2 years in college. I've also been to Japan but never lived there. I haven't kept up with my Japanese and as a result have started to forget a lot. I'd be a terrible conversation partner but I can give you some advice as to where to get started.

One of the main issues beginners have with learning Japanese is that the letters look all crazy and you can't even sound it out if you wanted to. You may have heard something like "Japanese has 4 alphabets" which is only partially true.

I highly recommend you start by learning the letters, make yourself some flash cards either with index cards or digital, and start coming up with pneumonic devices to remember them. There are plenty of resources out there that teach you the basics as if you're a kindergartener but don't let that discourage you, you are just learning the letters after all, its ok to be a kindergartener for a bit.

The first "alphabet" you'll want to memorize is Hiragana. It's what I used up above to write hello and it's the letter system the Japanese use for Japanese words. There are a few exceptions but for the most part if the word is Japanese, you write it in hiragana, at least when you're first learning. Every letter is a syllable so the first letter あ (a) is prounounced "ah" whenever you see it. い (i) is not pronounced "eye" but more like the English letter "e". お (o) is pronounced "oh" so if you put these together あおい - aoi is pronounced "ah-oh-ee"

The next set of letters to learn is Katakana. Its the same exact syllables as hiragana but the shapes look different. That is to say the same letter is still a prounounced "ah" but instead of あ it now looks like ア. Katakana tends to have more straight lines and jagged curves. This is the alphabet the Japanese use to write non-Japanese words. For example America or hamburger are both words borrowed from somewhere besides Japan and therefore would be written in Katakana. America is written アメリカ with the letters a, me, ri, ka, and pronounced "ah-meh-ri-ka" with 4 distinct syllables.

Those are the 2 main letter systems you'll be writing with when you first start. The other two are romaji and kanji. Romaji is simply writing Japanese syllables with English (latin) lettering. So あおい is written aoi and アメリカ is amerika. The trick to romaji is remembering to pronounce it in Japanese syllables, not how it would sound in English. Amerika looks like it could be pronounced the same as America to an English speaker but you need to make the ah, meh, ri, and ka distinct. You wont use romaji too much in actual writing but it will help you remember the pronunciations when first learning and it is used for typing Japanese on standard qwerty keyboards.


The last "alphabet" is not really an alphabet at all. It's called Kanji and it is extremely discouraging to your starting Japanese student. Borrowed almost entirely from Chinese Kanji is a series of literally thousands of characters that can make up entire words or parts of words. The nice thing about Kanji is that it uses many repeating parts called radicals from one character to the next and once you learn the most used pieces it becomes easier to recognize. The problem is that you can't sound them out if you've never seen one particular Kanji before and for very early beginners it is difficult to look up.

Kanji will often be mixed with other Kanji or hiragana to create a full word. For example 青い is "aoi" from above, same exact word but by writing the Kanji it saves a character and space. It may seem like much more work for 1 character of saving but kanji can sometimes represent several syllables and long words can be shortened into just 2 or 3 spaces. As a result many newspapers and comics heavily rely on Kanji and can be frustrating for beginners. Most Japanese classes will first get you comfortable with everything above before starting on Kanji and then only introduce the most basic ones a few at a time until you get the hang of them.

Just a couple pieces of miscellaneous advice:

1. First learn hiragana and katakana and don't worry about vocab until you've got a pretty good grasp on it. Do worry about pronunciation though. It can seem weird at the very start but it's better to get it right at the start than to have to break a bad habit later ("e" is pronounced "eh" not "ee" and "u" is "ooo" not "you")
   
   
2. For the most part hiragana and katakana pronunciation follows the same 5 vowel sounds. If you were reading off the alphabet it would sound like this "ah ee oo eh oh / kah kee koo keh koh / tah chi tsu teh toh / mah mee moo meh moh" etc.. notice how in the "tah" line what would be "tee" is now "chi" and what would be "too" is "tsu". That's one of the few exceptions but any decent hiragana guide will cover things like that. Also I was not writing in romaji there, I was just writing how the letters actually sound"
   
   
3. Don't let this massive guide get you down. Honestly you could learn hiragana and katakana in an evening if you crack down on it and in a week if you just look at it for a bit every day. From there you can start to work on vocabulary and grammar. The only thing that really makes Japanese hard is the letters and once you have the basics its really not that bad.
   
   
4. A lot of books, especially children's books or comics will have little hiragana letters over the kanji to help you learn or continue reading if you don't know the kanji. Once you get a decent grasp at grammar don't be afraid to muscle your way through a kid's book or two to get a feel for things. No one expects you to be able to fly through it but with a dictionary by your side and a notebook for translating its really fun to work your way through something like that. I wouldn't worry about that for a bit though.
   
   
5. Since I was taught in a classroom I don't know too much about learning online. I do know there are a ton of resources online if you know what to search for "romaji to hiragana, kanji dictionary, etc". I do know that it helps to have someone who speaks it work on your pronunciation, maybe live mocha could help there. I'd avoid using anime for pronunciation advice because you'll end up with the voice and mannerisms of a cartoon character. :)
   
   
6. The book my university used for people who didn't speak a single word of Japanese was Genki and I highly recommend it. It has a lot of English in it and works you through basics of grammar and vocab at a good rate. Plus it has a mini dictionary in the back of words it teaches you and a hiragana and katakana chart which is handy to have in a physical format. If you do like the book they have several more in the series that gets you to fairly advanced stuff in an easy way.
   
   Sorry about the wall of text but I hope it helps point you in the right direction. If you have any questions feel free to PM me and if anyone who speaks Japanese has better advice let me know! Like I mentioned at the top I've started to forget a lot from not using it and I've never taught it so maybe there are better resources out there. Good luck and have fun!

Hey! Good to see someone interested in East Asian languages! The CJKV writing system normally throws a lot of people off.

CJK Writing System

I wrote a short little rant a while back on how the characters are constructed that you might want to read.

There are methods of learning the characters that make use of their structure. Heisig's RtK and RtH books (Amazon link) are the most well known books I think. Fansites such as Reviewing the Kanji and Reviewing the Hanzi also exist which you might want to take a look at.

Not sure if you like RtK? Here's the sampler. See if you like it after learning 276 characters~

Chinese-Specific

The only thing headache inducing about any Chinese dialect is the writing system and tones.

Note that though we call them "dialects", it is a matter of politics as most of them are mutually unintelligible. A Cantonese or Mandarin speaker is unlikely to understand a Hokkien speaker at all, for example.

Written chinese, on the other hand, is in Mandarin and only in Mandarin -- the other dialects do not have writing systems. Well... the notable exception is Written Cantonese, but that's can be seen as a variant of standard written chinese.

Oh! There are have two variants of the standard writing system: Simplified and Traditional. I had learnt the former in school, and I can read the latter after learning about the simplification process, so just pick one and stick with it.

I personally find Mandarin grammar to quite simple. This might be because it's an isolating language.

• Zhongwen.com -- I love the way he arranges related characters together in a tree.
  
• nciku.cn -- Online Chinese Dictionary
  
• Unfortunately I don't have that many online Chinese resources, and the physical ones I have are hard to obtain here in the UK.
  
• Reviewing the Hanzi has a nice list.
  
  Japanese-Specific
  
  Japanese folk have an easier time with Chinese characters. While 6000 Hanzi is roughly college-level (I think?) in Chinese, 6000 Kanji in Japanese is probably more-than-you-need-to-know-ever. There is a Kanji Aptitude Test which is pretty much the only reason one would learn that many.
  
  However, Japanese also have two syllabaries you'll need to know (~50 syllables each). These are phonetic, so they shouldn't pose much of a challenge; most who learn Japanese learn both of them in one or two weeks.
  
  Essential:
  
  
• Denshi Jisho -- Online Japanese dictionary (Basically WWWJDIC with a pretty interface)
  
  Beginner resources:
  
  
• TextFugu - An Online Textbook
  
• Tae Kim - Another Online Textbook, slightly more well-known. Free, unlike TextFugu.
  
• I would also strongly recommend grabbing Remembering the Kanji as soon as possible.
  
• Genki -- Textbook. Some will say to avoid this completely, but just for starting off I don't think it's /that/ bad. Get rid of it once you're past the beginner stage though.
  
  Books to get:
  
  
• Writing - Remembering the Kanji and Remembering the Kana
  
• Speaking / Listening - Shadowing Book 1, Shadowing Book 2
  
• Grammar - Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar
  
• Grammar - Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication
  
• Yes, I recommend both books.
  
  Mixed collection of Online Resources:
  
  
• Reading material - A list I posted a while back
  
• Listening material - Another list, though Koohii has a better one
  
• On Japanese flashcards
  
• Random learning resources from Koohii

Rosetta Stone sucks donkey dong. Use Tae Kim's guide, Remembering the Kanji, and Genki. For listening, Pimsleur's and Japanese Pod 101 are quite good.

Get a good textbook and a good dictionary. I recommend Genki as your first textbook. Look through these links, all of them are excellent resources:

http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313916758&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789011631/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313917396&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Structure/dp/1880656906

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Kanji-Kana-Revised-Language/dp/0804820775

I'm sorry to hijack this thread.

I'm heading to Japan in 11 hours for 4 months(Going abroad for my college), and I lived there for 10 months in high school. I study Japanese at my college.

My biggest fault in grammar. I've used a couple of resources to help me, so I'll start with that.

Japanese the Manga Way is one of my all-time favorite resource book. It's less boring, and has well written explanations. I've often used this book as a supplement to my other textbooks.

Genki is another favorite. I've used both 1 and 2 in my college class, and if well taught is extremely valuable. It teaches Kanji/grammar/ vocab at a moderate pace.

I've also used this grammar book in the past. It's good, but lacks in presentation.

Tuttle's Japanese Guide to Kana/Kanji provides good practice space for Kana/Kanji. The later Kanji's space can be limited, but if you write it in pencil you can erase and re-write at any given time.

I use the Random-House dictionary, but it's kind of 'old hat'. For online I use Jisho.org or Jim Brean's dictionary. There was another one I used to use that was very similar to Jisho.org that was made by a Redditor but I lost the link. If you have a DS I would recommend Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten, it's like have a full electronic dictionary w.o the full price (Though I wish you could jump from English -> Japanese words [You can do Japanese -> English words] but that's my only grievances against it).

Good luck!

Well do you care if it's a slightly older edition? Because those you can get on amazon for $10 before shipping.

> EDIT: I unfortunately do not have a library at my school

How about your local public library, then?

> I found a copy on ebay for ~40$ is this the correct version?: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genki-An-Integrated-Course-in-Elementary-Japanese-CD-by-Banno-and-Eri-Banno-/131318287934

I would just honestly buy used from Amazon. Ten bucks or so.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/4789009637/ref=sr_1_3_twi_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1413268766&sr=8-3&keywords=genki+i

I'm currently using a couple of things -- The trick is to find what works for you the best :D (And these work for me, but yea everyone is different :D)

-----

• TextFugu -- http://www.textfugu.com/ [Not a free Resource after the first season $20 USD] [Will also provide Anki lists for you to work with as well as worksheets and a really great forum base]
  
• Human Japanese 2.0 (Software) --http://www.humanjapanese.com/
  
• JapanesePod101 (Podcasts) --- http://www.japanesepod101.com/
  
  
  I have heard good things about the Genki Textbook series (http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/) -- I don't personally use it, due to the fact I am studying Japanese at university and we use Total Japanese Series instead (http://www.amazon.com/Total-Japanese-Conversation-Kimiko-Okano/dp/489358278X)
  
  
  -------------------------------------------
  
  
  
  Also this site has a good resource list to start from: http://www.japanese-irc.net/index.php?title=Japanese_Resources
  
  http://www.tofugu.com/2012/08/28/japanese-reading-practice-for-beginners/
  
  I also recommend Anki Flashcards
  
  --------------------------------------
  
  Also you will be able to find some help at this subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/
  
  And if your are interested, someone is running a UofReddit Course on Japanese:: http://ureddit.com/class/43183/japanese-101 [Subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/uofrjapanese]
  
  ------------------------------
  -----------------------------
  
  
  Good Luck With your learning :)
  がんばってください

It's less than $5 used on Amazon if you don't mind getting it without the CD: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/4789009637/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

If you don't mind having the first edition, you can get a used copy off of Amazon for around　£２５

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Genki-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789009637/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1347125733&sr=8-3

the genki books are good for starter-intermediate learning.... kana's the easy part though. you need to find a kanji book to really know how to read.

edit for teh TL;DR better infoz: the first genki book teaches roughly 100 kanji if i remember correctly and the second's like 150 or something. the follow up book is called An Integrated Approach to Japanese and is more difficult as kana to assist kanji reading is mostly gone, but you'll learn enough from those three books if fully studied to understand basic news prints/read childrens' manga...
here's genki 1:
http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291080055&sr=8-1
there's a supplementary workbook that you don't necessarily need but can order as well, good for writing practice/exercises.
Genki II:
http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789011631/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1291080055&sr=8-4
I'm not sure where to get copies of the third book as i bought it for university but you can probably find it on amazon or abebooks. just be sure you're not getting only the workbook that is mostly fill in the blank.

• 1. The First 100 Japanese Kanji: A great first step into the world of kanji. Basic, but at first you just need something to help you dip your feet in the water.
     
• 2. Berlitz Essential Japanese: Better than I expected, by why bother with non-academic textbook if you're a serious learner?
     
• 3. Genki I: This was my real first foray into Japanese. Great series, especially for self-study. Holds your hand but covers a lot of territory. It helps to read it, then go back and read it again. I used the workbook on a few occasions, but not much. NOTE: The link is to the old version.
     
• 4. Genki II: The follow-up to Genki I. Goes into more complicated grammar. Again, a great book. I used JGram and Tae Kim's a lot to reinforce my learning with the Genki series. NOTE: The link is to the old version.
     
• 5. N3 Speed Master Series: I really liked these, however I didn't use them for long before moving on to N2 materials. It wasn't well edited, though, and some placeholder text was repeated a lot in the grammar book.
     
• 6. 合格できるN3: This is just practice problems. Really useful for the N3, though.
     
• 7.　絵で見てわかる 日本語表現文型 初中級: This was recommended by a friend. I love it because it was my transition into using primarily Japanese to study. It's a list of grammar points from high N4 to low N2 level, with related phrases lumped together. There are example dialogues and pictures along with a few sparse English notes. It's not perfect, though (some sentences don't give you a very good understanding of the grammar points).
  
• 8. Remembering the Kanji: I dropped WaniKani to study faster, and used RtK as my new curriculum. I used Reviewing the Kanji more than this book, though.
     
• 9. Shadowing: Let's Speak Japanese: Okay, so I only ever used the CD (not the book). Still it's great. I realized my listening was weak and conversation skills were even weaker so I found this. Starts slow, builds up. Funny and interesting. Transcribing the sentences helped my ear a lot.
     
• 10. 新完全マスターN2 Series: These are amazing for intermediate Japanese and preparing for the N2. The Kanji and vocab books are probably the weakest and least necessary. The others are essential for N2 study.
      
      I know there's been a few others but I can't think of them right now.

-Stay motivated. I tried learning Japanese on my own for about 2 years (didn't get very far) until I finally got to college and was able to take a class. The foundation I'd already established helped SO much, and now I'm learning at an incredible rate. But that's because I have 4 classes a week, and I'm constantly using everything I know to write and speak frequently.
-For learning hiragana, katakana, and kanji, try to make up stories or associate the pictographs with things that you can remember. There are certain workbooks that will teach you hiragana and katakana, giving you cutesy little ways to remember the characters. That's a good starting place.
-I'm using the textbook Genki...learning from a textbook helps you go through grammar in pretty logical steps.
-Pay close attention to the sentence structure. Once you get that down, it's easy. (Ex: Instead of Subject Verb Object - I kicked the ball - Japanese uses Subject Object Verb - I the ball kicked.)

Start off with Hiragana for Beginners and then move onto Katakana

I used the first one.. It comes with flashcards. Then I moved to the Katakana. Same author..

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Hiragana-Beginners-Mastering-Writing/dp/480530877X/ref=pd_sim_b_58
or
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Hiragana-Katakana-Beginners-Mastering/dp/4805311444/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324364592&sr=1-2

These books have vocobaulary that has the letters you are learning. So as you learn the letters, you can learn words with the letters youve already learned.

Then you can move onto books like :

This one focuses more on dialogue

http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Sentence structure:
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Sentence-Patterns-Effective-Communication/dp/4770029837/ref=pd_sim_b_2