I think it would be a struggle but it’s going to depend on how many hours you can devote to it in the next few weeks. You’ll want to really try to beef up your grammar knowledge. If you don’t own a grammar textbook I would recommend using an online source like Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide, or a YouTube course like CureDolly or Japanese Ammo with Misa. Waiting to have a grammar book shipped to you is going to eat up half your time. The good news is that WK is very slow in the early levels so you can keep up with reviews while also studying grammar.
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I think a few items it depends on would be:
- How well you understand English grammar. (Most guides will use English grammar terms to represent similar Japanese grammar.)
- How well you grasp new grammar/language concepts that differ from English.
- How well you can retain all that new information.
And going into the start of reading the manga:
- How well you can read ひらがな and カタカナ by August.
- How much you can tolerate having to look up the meaning of every word (even though we’ll have a vocabulary list).
If you were to, for example, read through a good grammar guide, and remember it all, you would have enough information to understand the basics of anything in レンタルおにいちゃん. You would still have to look up the vocabulary and a lot of grammar, but you’d have the basics.
One guide I’m enjoying reading through (as sort of a refresher of the basics) is “Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure”, which I bought several years ago and then never read through. It seems like a good guide for beginners, without getting too heavy in the grammar. (But as @tankwidow says, even if you buy a grammar book, you’ll want to use the shipping time to read free resources online.)
Best case scenario: you use the book club as an opportunity to rapidly learn a lot of grammar. By the end of the volume, you’ll be amazed as how much you’ve come to know in a short amount of time.
Worse case scenario: you aren’t able to keep up, and you come back to it later after you learn more at your own pace.
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Thank you all for the responses!
I got through some chapters of Genki I a year ago and I enjoyed it a lot. Now I’ve forgotten most of what I learned, but I’m thinking of buying Japanese the Manga Way for grammar. How far along would I have to get to be slightly comfortable with レンタルおにいちゃん?
Keeping in mind that, of course, “comfortable” will be highly subjective, and “slightly comfortable” will also vary from person to person…
I’d say for “Japanese the Manga Way” specifically, it would probably be…the whole book. But if you were to start by reading chapters 1, 5–11, 18–20, and then read other chapter as needed to learn them, that could help for a rapid introduction.
Note: Whether this style of quickly cramming information in advance works or not will depend on the individual. My recommendation (considering the short time span) would be to minimally encounter the concepts in July, and then learn them in depth each week alongside the book club schedule.
While I think exposure to everything in “Japanese the Manga Way” is good in advance of reading, the 11 chapters I mentioned above (topics which you can read up on via Tae Kim’s online guide and other grammar guides as well) are:
Select here to view recommended chapter list
| Chapter | Title |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Three Basic Sentence Types[1] |
| 5 | Doing Things with する |
| 6 | Modifying Verbs, Adjectives, and です |
| 7 | Modifying Nouns |
| 8 | Explanatory の |
| 9 | が Marks the Subject |
| 10 | を Marks the Direct Object |
| 11 | は Marks the Topic |
| 18 | Past Forms |
| 19 | The -て Form |
| 20 | Negative Verbs |
[1] The three basic sentence types are:
- Action: “Subject does verb”
- Description: “Noun has the quality of adjective”
- Identification: “Noun1 is a noun2”
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While you’re waiting for your book, you could try watching some of Cure Dolly’s lessons. The author presents her material using a ‘doll’ avatar which some people find off-putting, but personally I think the instruction is first rate. I like it better than Genki or Tae Kim.
This could simply be a starting place for your grammar studies before your book arrives. If you like the videos and want to continue, I would watch the first ten lessons. Personally I like to watch the videos twice to help the material stick, but everyone studies differently. If you want to reinforce it even further you can download the audio from the videos and make a playlist on your phone.
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Thanks for this!
I’ve been watching some of Japanese Ammo with Misa and I like it a lot. What would you say is the main difference between the two channels?
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I’ve never actually watched Misa. I was just trying to give a well-rounded recommendation. Once I found Dolly I stuck with her videos.
Obviously I can’t give a comparison to every Japanese grammar source out there but Dolly’s lessons tend to be very insightful. A lot of people who have learned from Genki or classroom teachers comment and say that she helped clear up a lot of confusion. She goes beyond ‘it works this way, memorize it’, and tries to explain why things work the way they do.
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(Disclaimer: different person XD)
I haven’t watched a ton of videos on either channel, but I’d say the biggest difference I’ve noticed is that Misa is a native Japanese speaker, who speaks a lot on what natives would say, while Cure Dolly is not a native speaker who talks a lot about the “best” way to learn grammar/the language (ie not the way textbooks teach it).
I’d also recommend Bunpro! It’s an SRS service like WK that reinforces grammar points, and it’s paid, but their free trial lasts 1 month, just in time for the book club!
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It all depends on how much time and determination you’ve got. If you have a full-time job, seven kids, three dogs, and are in the middle of moving house, forget it. If you are independently wealthy, have no family or friends, no hobbies, and have decided to devote your life to reading manga, it is perfectly possible to follow along and learn loads!
Regarding YouTube videos, I can’t really speak for Cure Dolly (I’m one of those people put off by the presentation I’m afraid), but can say Missa is totally excellent!
One problem you’ll have in the early stages is mustering your resources! There are so many out there that you won’t know which is best for you, until you try them all. And than in itself takes a lot of time. I have loads of resources bookmarked, but now only use a small handful of them. Take a look around the forums for ideas. I believe there is a thread devoted to resources, and the master list of study logs will give you loads of ideas based on how other people study.
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I’m basically starting new as well, but I’m going into this as a study experience.
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I know right… it may well describe a good number of the people here on the forums!
(the point being that we all fall somewhere between the two extremes!)
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Wow! Way to go Amazon.co.jp, crazy fast shipping. Books were expected to arrive on July 25th (shipping from both Tokyo and Nagoya) and all arrived today on the 16th. The ones from Nagoya were literally next day. The logistics blow my mind
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whoa the 4 of them look great together. The covers are pretty
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CureDolly is my favorite (once you get past the doll aspect). I really need to know the “why” things are to learn something and she does a good job making sense of that so my brain can naturally apply it.
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Okay got the first volume I will participate. But I am not sure that I will wait until August. I may start to read it right away.
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She is seriously the best. Her videos just totally blow my mind. The doll aspect seemed weird to me at first, but now it seems totally normal. Have you read her Unlocking Japanese book? I ordered a copy but it never arrived for some reason, so I was thinking about ordering it again.
Does anyone have a physical copy of this book? Could you take a picture of the spine for me? I’m trying to find it in a physical bookstore and their staff is limited right now so they don’t have anyone that can help me search the shelves. They have a lot of books and I can’t read Japanese that fast so trying to find a certain book is a bit overwhelming.
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Funny you say that, I have been supporting her on Patreon for almost a year and have a signed copy of the Unlocking Japanese & Alice in Kanji Land right in front of me! I know Amazon sells it but I bought it direct to better support. Here’s a picture of the spine:
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Oh man I probably should have made those separate posts. I’m trying to get a picture of the book club book.
That’s super cool though! What is Alice in Kanji land like? Is it mostly English or is it in Japanese? I wasn’t sure if it would be beneath my skill level or not, since I already know a few hundred kanji.
