I’ve chuckled a bit reading this thread for this very reason as people are putting WAY too much importance on this. Your approach is the best IMO.
Better than “why are you being so crude”. That’s a comment someone else got from a Japanese friend’s family member for using too-casual language.
Is your friend fluent?
It’s not a friend, someone here on WK shared their story, and no they weren’t.
The main thing was they decided to use めし over ご飯. As their main word for meal.
If they weren’t fluent and scold for it then it’s that person’s issue. Simply put, that person was being an ass.
As long as mannerisms are in check (appropriate) and people know you are not fluent then nobody should be giving you attitude or accusing one of being crude…
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People need to understand that we are no longer discussing what the learner should choose to learn first, but also what the one teaching should do. Different perspectives 
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Getting quite off topic now, but briefly:
The story was that a young woman in Japan was trying to use a different word for a meal instead of ご飯 (for the sake of variety) so she said 飯 instead. And the grandmother wondered why she was using such a crude word. It would be as though you said to your friend’s grandmother I like this grub or I like this chow.
Maybe the grandmother shouldn’t have taken it personally (and maybe she didn’t), but she was right to correct that word usage. It might’ve been mortifying for the young woman, but that’s how we learn which words are appropriate in which situations. Because to a degree, language acquisition is a process of trial and error. We’re all going to make some major blunders sooner or later.
And it’s better to have these mistakes nipped in the bud than have them become ingrained habits.
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I feel like taking word choices personally is lesson number one in the New Grandmothers’ Handbook the world over.
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Ouch. My wife’s dad says that to her mum whilst waving his plate as does her brother coming in from work and chucking his stuff on the floor and sitting at the table. Not one I would try.
“I was eaten.” Hahahahahaha. Thanks. I would definitely remember that if my teacher used that.
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i don’t even call the meals my wife cooks めし, but that’s what i refer to when i cook.
yes, my wife is close and intimate, but i also don’t ever refer to her as お前
maybe i’m just an old fart, but i believe that a certain niveau is a GoodThing™
I think that there are a lot of different positions here.
On one hand, learning the ます form of verbs is helpful so that someone can interact with Japanese people as soon as possible and participate in the culture and speech politely.
However, I personally think the じしょ form should be taught first, if for no other reason than the fact that it IS the base form. I think ます definitely SHOULD be the very next step, but learning it first kind of feels like going to step 2 before doing step 1.
Plus, someone with insufficient knowledge might think that the ます form IS the base form if they learn it first and it honestly could set them back rather than setting a strong foundation from the get-go, and then easily transitioning to learning the ます form (because it’s honestly not hard).
TL;DR: じしょ form for me! It’s more basic than the ます form so I have trouble justifying learning the latter first. If you don’t know enough about Japanese to speak to people politely, then maybe you shouldn’t be trying until you’ve learned a bit more… That’s just the way it is sometimes!
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Personally, I think it is best to start from Chinese. If you do it that way, then you already know all the romaji coming in. After that you can just focus on reading Amazon reviews and stuff to level up. Really, masu and te are pretty early romaji, I think, in the Chinese alphabet, so once you learn those, they translate over really easily.
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Because in the ます, the difference between る-verbs and う-verbs is more pronounced.
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