I wouldn’t know about Japanese kids but in primary school (in Australia) there were some textbook-like exercise books we had. One such example: Spelling Mastery, aka Smelly Fartery 
(I didn’t care for it and learned nothing through that, but others may have needed it, who knows)
There were also some reading comprehension exercise books. I don’t remember any that specifically focused on grammar though. We mostly did that through worksheets in class or assignments — just practice and then more practice, I suppose.
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For Cure Dolly: Turn on the subs 
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Does her book worth reading? I heard a lot of good things about her videos. So if I can’t stand her voice, I would consider purchasing her book instead.
Really depends on the language. Let’s be honest, English grammar is quite simple (spelling isn’t though).
For Slavic languages as a native speaker you study them all the way until your 1st/2nd year of college. The grammar is really convoluted and for each grammar rule you have to memorize dozens of exceptions. The spelling is also pretty bad, so again you’d have spelling quizes all the time. I remember we had not one but several textbooks and workbooks. And we also had separate courses for Native Language and Native Literature. Overall it was a heck of a workload studying our native language…
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I honestly don’t think it’s worth it. It’s a good book, but it was written before the bulk of her video series and it feels like many of her ideas weren’t fully fleshed out yet.
I think her videos are great but I can understand getting past the voice is really tough for some people.
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That’s a shame the other Japanese teacher Youtuber I think has really good contents is “Japanese Ammo with Misa”. I watch one of her video and I think the content is really good, but I can’t listen to her voice longer than 5 minute. It’s just… I don’t know how to describe it in English… too cute I guess.
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Then Cure Dolly should be right up your alley
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Just being curious now… so would high school kids make a lot of mistakes in terms of grammar and spelling then?
I remember weekly spelling tests all through primary, but in high school they became less regular and by Grade 9 they disappeared almost completely. In the senior years English class was focused on how adeptly you expressed yourself in your writing.
Are you saying that grammar in your native language was studied even through college? Because… wow 
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Of course in high school you wouldn’t make basic mistakes like in middle school but you’re still likely to get the punctuation wrong for example. And unfortunately there are common mistakes that even adults make. I am not a great example because I’ve lived abroad for many years now but when I have to write in my native language I often don’t remember how to write correctly (certain things, not everything of course). Really embarrassing because I want to maintain my reputation of a well educated person
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We have similar problems in Thai language. The langauge is overly complex many Thais can’t read or write properly until they are in high school.
They need to simplified the language like how Laos did decades ago. However, the conservatives in Thailand have stupid ego and pride on how complex our langauge is and keep making the langauge as silly as it is.
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I saw a video about Thai language and apparently the writing system is very complex, perhaps one of the most difficult in the world.
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And I’m not proud of it lol. It’s just plainly stupid. We have something similar to Katakana to show if the word is from Buddhist or Hindu root, cool right? It’s cool if you don’t need to actually learn them lol.
That why we have 44 alphabets, 21 vowels, and 4 umm melody note???. Then if you are smart enough (or stupid enough) to memorize all of these… you still can’t make sense out of how to read the words properly because many of them has hidden vowels inside the words that don’t show you any where. You need to memorize them. Good luck on that.
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OK, so, I’m obviously not fluent in Thai , so I can’t really help you find resources. However, so, I went digging for some information on Thai grammar. (I’m sure I’m gonna forget lots of it after today, unless I start learning Thai as well.) Here are some of the things I found, which I suppose I can compare with Japanese:
Sentence structure and modifying syntax
Japanese is SOV, Thai is SVO. I suppose you know what that means? It’s about where the subject (S), verb (V) and object (O) usually go in a sentence. In Japanese, the verb is right at the end. In Thai, it’s usually near the beginning, right after the subject.
When it comes to modifying nouns (i.e. adding additional words to describe them) with verbs and adjectives, Thai and Japanese work in opposite directions: Japanese puts all modifiers in front of a noun, whereas Thai puts them after. In Thai, you have a relative clause marker that is similar to ‘that’ in English: ที่ /tîi/. It’s also used as a preposition. (I’ll get back to this in a moment.) Japanese has no such thing: it simply uses the ‘noun-joining form’ (連体形=れんたいけい) of adjectives and verbs in front of nouns. This form is usually the dictionary form in modern Japanese, which looks like the form you find at the end of a casual sentence. This means that you need to mentally ‘convert’ [ที่ /tîi/ + description] into [noun-joining form].
As for using nouns to modify nouns, like with possession (‘A of B’), once again, Japanese and Thai work in opposite directions. I’d say that the equivalent of の as a possessive particle (i.e. for stuff like ‘my apple’) in Thai is ข้าง /kâang/. 「AのB」 in Japanese is roughly the same as ‘Bข้างA’ in Thai. I was surprised to see this, but it seems that you can even extend this similarity to other things, like describing locations: ใน(ข้าง)รถ means ‘inside (of) car’, right? Same thing in Japanese, but in reverse: 車の中 (='car ‘s inside’).
Demonstrative determiners
Speaking of location, something else I found interesting (but reassuring) is that Thai seems to have three separate words for ‘here’, ‘there’, and ‘over there’, just like Japanese:
- ที่นี่ /tîi nîi/ (at this)
- ที่นั่น /tîi nân/ (at that)
- ที่โน่น /tîi nôon/ (at that over there)
ที่ literally means ‘place’, if I’m not wrong. Well, Japanese is similar: ここ、そこ、あそこ all contain こ, which also means ‘place’. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that where (ที่ไหน) is also literally ‘which place’, right? That’s just like どこ in Japanese.
For ‘this one’, ‘that one’ and ‘that one over there’, Thai just reuses those words, right? But without the preposition ที่? So you get
- นี่ /nîi/ (this)＝これ
- นั่น /nân/ (that)＝それ
- โน่น /nôon/ (that over there)＝あれ
Where the similarities break down is when saying ‘this ~’ or ‘that ~’, when the words are used to describe something, and not as a pronoun. In Thai, you just change the tone of the words above, right? In Japanese, you have to add の to the こ・そ・あ・ど stems. Maybe you can think of it as
- 〜ข้างนี่＝この〜
- 〜ข้างนั่น＝その〜
- 〜ข้างโน่น＝あの〜
(Do those three phrases even make sense in Thai? Sorry if they don’t.) Notice how, once again, the order used for modification is reversed: in Thai, it’s ‘noun+description’. In Japanese, it’s ‘description+noun’.
Verbs
Thai doesn’t conjugate its verbs, but it adds circumstantial information and extra words. Mandarin and Malay do that too, I think. Japanese also adds a lot of circumstantial information, but it conjugates verbs.
When it comes to verb modification, Japanese puts adverbs before the verb. I think they’re usually quite close to the verb, but they can also be put further away, as is often the case with もう, for instance. In Thai, apparently all adverbs go straight to the end of the sentence. That’s another important difference.
A particular verb I want to mention is อยู่ /yùu/. I think you could say that this is the Thai equivalent of ある and いる. It’s a location (and perhaps existence?) verb. I notice that you can use it with ที่. I guess you could say that ที่ is the equivalent of に in phrases like にある、にいる and に住む (verbs that express existing in a location in a certain way). It also seems that อยู่ has another important function (I’m guessing because no Thai learning resources online tell me this explicitly): it expresses where an action other than existing is happening. That brings us to our next point:
Particles
I think the two most important particles to know relative to verbs are に and で:
- に – indicates location of existence (like ที่ when it’s used with อยู่). However, it also has a lot of other functions, like indicating the direction of movement, an aim, a purpose, an indirect object (e.g. ‘I sent a letter to him’)… (I like to call it the ‘pointing’ particle). It can also indicate the person or thing that did an action while not being the subject of a verb (some examples: the person who did the action of a passive verb – ‘he was tickled by his friend’; 彼に作ってもらった: ‘I had him make it for me’). Finally, it can indicate the way something is done by marking an adverb (e.g.丁寧に=‘politely’, but you could also say that 丁寧 is a な-adjective and that 丁寧に is just the adverb version).
- で – indicates the location of an action other than existence (so something like อยู่ + ที่ in Thai, I guess). Also indicates the means/thing used to do something, which also makes it adverbial, but with that ‘means’ nuance. I think the closest thing in Thai is ด้วย /dûai/. Sometimes, it’s also the て-form of だ, but in that case, it’s technically not a particle. (In traditional Japanese grammar, the concept of the て-form doesn’t exist, and so strictly speaking, で is the 連用形＝れんようけい＝’verb-joining form’ of だ, which just means that it joins だ to the next verb.)
Other important basic particles:
- が – for the subject of a verb or adjective. Tends to place emphasis on what comes before it and links it closely to what comes right after. May also have an exclusive nuance (i.e. Aが[verb/adjective] means ‘A did [verb]’ or ‘A is [adjective]’, and not somebody else).
- は – topic marker. Provides the context for discussion. Can also have a contrasting nuance (e.g. Aは…、Bは…。would mean ‘A [to do/to be]…, while B [to do/to be]…’, and so you would be comparing A and B).
- を – for the object of a verb. Indicates what is undergoing the action of the verb. Can also indicate the context of action for a movement verb e.g. (空を飛ぶ means ‘to fly through/in the sky’ and not ‘to fly the sky’).
- の – used for possession (covered above) and also for modifying stuff with another noun (also covered above, somewhat). The difference between possession and modification with の is that only possession involves belonging. For example, ‘the secret of beauty’ does not belong to
‘beauty’, but it is related to beauty. You can use の the same way as ‘of’ was used in that sentence. Another use of の is something called ‘apposition’, which means that you link two nouns that refer to the same thing or person, with the second noun being the main noun. For example, 私のバカ=‘the idiot that is me’ or ‘the idiot, me’. The final use of の is as a nominaliser or pronoun: you attach it to a verb/adjective phrase to turn it into a phrase that acts like a noun. For example, 彼が食べるのは can mean both ‘regarding the fact that he eats’ or ‘regarding the one that he eats’. In the first case, の is a nominaliser (i.e. a ‘thing that turns something else into a noun’), whereas in the second, の is a pronoun. This pronoun usage also exists for the possessive meaning of の: 彼のは would mean ‘regarding the one that is his’.
I hope none of that was too technical, and that it helped, especially the comparisons between Thai and Japanese. I’m sorry if I made any mistakes with regard to the Thai, because all I did was look for a lot of sites about Thai grammar, and this is my first time doing anything with Thai. I think that all this should provide you with some basic idea of how to understand Japanese grammar with the help of your native language. Do tell me if anything isn’t clear.
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OMG I don’t know how to express my graditude toward this long and well though reply. I will take my time read each words throughly. Thank you!!
I know this might be a pre-mature question, but I’m considering learning a 4th language after I’m good enough at Japanese (passing N1 would be a good goal to aim at). What language do you reccomend? I’m thinking about learning either Chinese or German. (or perhaps Korean)
The main reason I want to learn Chinese is I want to read 新著龍虎門 lol. For German, I just think it would be good on my resume. I put Korean in my consideration because I’ve learnt Korean before because my Korean ex forced me to haha, but I don’t really feel any passion toward the langauge. (no offense to any Korean. If any Korean feel that way, I’m sorry)
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THIS. Most of the reason “Japanese is so hard” is simply because it’s sooooo different to English. We have to relearn pretty much everything we already understand about how language works. And as native English speakers, most of what we understand, we learned before we even knew what it was, so we don’t even know why it works.
While I always advise people learning any language to use resources strictly between their native language and their target language, I understand that there’s way more resources in English. But like Leebo said, you can’t use resources aimed at teaching English speakers a language, and then get irritated/frustrated/etc that they are centered around teaching English speakers.
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I’d say pick whichever interests you more! 
However, if we’re talking about similarities/ease of learning…
- Chinese has a sort of grammar that’s in between English and Japanese, and I don’t think you’ll be uncomfortable with the lack of conjugations because Thai is like that too. If you know a lot of Japanese kanji at that point, Chinese hanzi shouldn’t be too hard to learn either, because a lot of them are roughly the same. You might just have to go learn a set of conversions to help you see which characters are related. (Alternatively, better yet: go take a look at a few of the simplifications that are based on calligraphy rules. That way, they might seem more logical.) Chinese pronunciation… There are more sounds than in Japanese, but if you speak English as well, it shouldn’t be as much of a problem. Also, I have a feeling that Thai has most of the sounds Mandarin has a well, and it also has tones, so once again, nothing too new for you, I think.
- Korean has grammar that’s apparently very close to Japanese, but I think pronunciation will be slightly different. That aside, Korean seems to glue a lot more on using prefixes and suffixes than Japanese, but maybe the Wikipedia article I saw just has a lousy way of explaining things. Who knows? The honorific system in Korean is also different. If I’m not wrong, in Japanese, you need to choose the honorifics you use based on whom you’re talking to: for example, if you’re talking about person A to person B, but you also need to respect person B, in Japanese, you might want to use plainer honorifics for person A, or use something that is appropriate for your status and the status of person A relative to the status of person B. In Korean, however, I think that, if person A is your boss, then no matter what, you use the appropriate honorifics for person A because of the difference in status. (I don’t know for sure though, so you’ll have to look it up if you start learning Korean.) The Korean writing system is apparently very simple and logical to learn. I haven’t tried though, so again, you’ll have to see for yourself.
- German would be more similar to English. It’s from the same language family, and the words combine in a similar way. However, German has more complicated grammar than any of the languages I just mentioned, in my opinion, because German has case endings that you need to remember. In Japanese, you just attach a particle and you’re done: the particle indicates what functions the word plays. In German, you need to remember the right ending for the grammatical gender of the word that you’re looking at, and then use that to indicate the function. That aside, a lot of English words have Latin roots, so even though the two languages function similarly, a lot of words are different. I think that German would probably be the hardest language for you to study now, but if it interests you, don’t let that stop you. Everything is hard until you figure out how to do it.
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I started watching some of Cure Dolly’s videos but I quickly stopped again. Her behavior just comes over as a bit insufferable, like “language teachers are so stupid for teaching it that way instead of this way”, as if there’s not good reasons to teach it like that.
Like, it’s interesting to know why わかる uses が as the particle for the thing you understand instead of を like a native English speaker would expect when they translate the sentence, but it’s definitely not something I’d throw at a beginner.
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Thanks a lot!! Your explaination on each langauges alligns with what I know about those langauges. I will think about this seriously again in the future. (1-2 years I guess) Now I need to go back and keep studying Japanese!!
I wish I could pass N2 this December and N1 on the next year December!! I know I might set the bar too high but well… wish me luck!!
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Well of course - what else would they do?
You need to have some sort of entry point, and you can’t assume that a learner has experience with other foreign languages and can work at a level of abstraction straight out the gate. When all you know is your native language it takes a while to retrain your brain that things can be structured differently.
Baby steps. You have to start people with training wheels; can’t just put your 6 year old straight onto a Harley Davidson and be like, “Welp good luck!”
With that said, the whole thing of mapping Japanese to English is only there in the very beginning stage. From what I’ve seen it’s very common to be told early on to not try to make 1:1 direct translations between English and Japanese, and to start training your brain to think Japanese. The training wheels come off quickly.
From the intermediate level onwards I find that learning resources are increasingly Japanese-centric or entirely in Japanese. E.g. Tobira is far more Japanese-heavy than say the Genki books, and as someone else pointed out Shin Kanzen Master series from N2 and above have no English in them.
So I don’t see any fundamental issue with how Japanese is introduced to beginners.
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The other reason I raised this topic which I didn’t explain is I know some of my friends that learn Japanese from those methods and pass N4 but cannot make a structured sentence beyond what they memorized. They don’t even understand how to change verbs to other forms like -te and passive form. They just memorize them. (Classic Asian students that learn just for passing exams but cannot do anything on the field)
With your explanation I think they just don’t study far enough to reach the point that textbooks stop over simplified things and teach Japanese grammar how they supposed to teach.
Won’t it be more difficult for them to learn those concepts later rather than learning them on the earlier stage? That how I feel about my English learning in the past.
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