Is it just me or Western approach to Japanese grammar has problems?

[d-hermit]

@Pizh

pass N4 but cannot make a structured sentence beyond what they memorized.

Honestly, N4 is still a beginner. It’s not surprising they cannot produce well structured sentences yet. Also comprehension and production are separate skills. You can’t learn to read and expect to write at the same level of proficiency. You need to practice for that.

[jerseytom]

@Pizh

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. […] Classic Asian students that learn just for passing exams but cannot do anything on the field

All of this seems to be coming from a perspective where English isn’t the learner’s native language, and from an educational culture that’s learn-by-rote memorization. So it doesn’t seem like this is anything of a fair assessment of the “Western approach” or experience.

@Pizh

Won’t it be more difficult for them to learn those concepts later rather than learning them on the earlier stage?

In my experience both with self-studying Japanese, as well as having ~6 years of classroom instruction of Spanish and Italian, immersion and thinking in the target language is encouraged at as early an opportunity as is practical. But it’s still a gradual transition. I don’t think it’s conducive to long term success if you take a beginner and throw them in the deep end on day one. For a lot of people that will be overwhelming and they’ll tune out and lose interest.

Everyone learns a little bit differently and whatever’s best for them. Hell there are those who think that learning from Genki is too hard, and there are those who think it’s too easy with too much hand-holding…

[Jonapedia]

@Pizh

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.

Not necessarily, but I guess you need explanations that clearly link what they already know to what they need to know about conjugation and verb transformations. I was taught the ます forms first, but that didn’t cause me any problems when it came to learning dictionary form/casual conjugations. I just changed the base form in my head. However, it’s true that I still have a tendency to speak more naturally in the polite register than in the casual register, even though most of my conversation practice comes in the form of writing messages to my friend entirely in casual Japanese. Either way though, I’m sure that more practice will fix this.

[Pizh]

Actually, after I think about what I have said in this topic and have read many comments on this forum. Especially,what Meghana said earlier about his experience in Japanese public Junior High School. I finally realized. It’s not about “Western Approach” I’m too bias and too pre-mature to make the assumption.

This topic means a lot to me. Wanikani community has the best langauge learning community I’ve ever experience in my life. (I mean it)

Thanks everyone.

[rfindley]

By the way…
Of the various grammar resources I used early on, this was the clearest to me:

Japanese Sentence Structure: The Ultimate Beginner's Guide - 80/20 Japanese

[EarleyGrave]

@alo

I think her videos are great but I can understand getting past the voice is really tough for some people.

Honestly I’ve never thought of Cure Dolly’s voice as robotic, even though her persona is this anime android type. To me she sounds like a nice older British lady (I’m American btw).

[rfindley]

@EarleyGrave

she sounds like a nice older British lady

…with voice-altering software to make it higher pitch.

[EarleyGrave]

I guess, but since I don’t know who she is behind the doll, I don’t know what she sounds like naturally. I just never knew other people thought of it as robotic, until I came here lol. Makes me wish there was a way (other than subtitles) to make her content accessible to people who can’t stand her voice, since she really does explain things in an easy to understand way.

[Held]

Check out Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese. He breaks down the language into small parts and builds it from the ground up in an order that makes sense for Japanese, not English.

I think that’s the best way to get a native level understanding of Japanese, at least for a language nerd like me

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/

(Of course, reading and listening is important too, but in my experience, you learn faster if you combine both)

[EarleyGrave]

Tae Kim also has videos on YouTube, though he stopped making them years ago and they don’t cover all of his guide.

Tae Kim

[WeebPotato]

@davepirat

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.

I’m probably not as negative towards her methods, but I didn’t quite like her videos either for similar reasons. But it seems like a common trend (“my methods are better”) among some other YouTube teaching channels as well. Then again, I really liked the in-depth articles about grammar on Cure Doll’s website.

@davepirat

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.

However, it’s probably a good idea to explain to beginners early on that Japanese grammar works differently from English grammar so that they can learn how to translate sentences (or their ideas) 1:1 using core grammar concepts and not specific expressions .

@Held

Check out Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese. He breaks down the language into small parts and builds it from the ground up in an order that makes sense for Japanese, not English.

I really liked Tae Kim’s approach to language breakdown and I actually started my journey with Japanese grammar with his guide, but I would be a little wary of how he uses certain grammar structures. When you compare it for instance to Genki, the sentence structures do vary quite a bit.

[Held]

@AndyMender

I really liked Tae Kim’s approach to language breakdown and I actually started my journey with Japanese grammar with his guide, but I would be a little wary of how he uses certain grammar structures. When you compare it for instance to Genki, the sentence structures do vary quite a bit.

I don’t know enough Japanese yet to be a judge of that, but I would be wary to use a textbook as a reference. Language textbooks often teach awkward or outdated phrasing.

You’d have to ask a bunch of native speakers from different backgrounds to know what’s better. Anyone in Japan wants to give it a go?

[Jonapedia]

@Held

Language textbooks often teach awkward or outdated phrasing.

Do you mean just for Japanese or for languages in general? My favourite advanced French textbook covered one tense that’s hardly ever used anymore and one tense that’s only used in literature and formal writing: knowing the first is pretty pointless now unless you’re reading old books, but using the second makes you sound more educated, and it actually has a secondary use in conditional sentences. The language you find in textbooks in general is natural in formal situations and in writing, and it’ll help you with deciphering articles online and books. What you won’t be able to learn from most textbooks, however, is casual conversational words and colloquial simplifications: I was vaguely aware of casual abbreviations, common swear words and young people’s slang as a student of French, but I didn’t start using them until I started studying in France because I wasn’t sure how normal it was. The result isn’t necessarily that you sound unnatural to natives, but rather that you may sound more formal/polite, and you may even sound more educated/knowledgeable if you know more obscure or technical words. The main problem is that you may also sound too stiff around friends if you don’t make an effort to study casual constructions, but textbook-level casual constructions are usually sufficient for you to learn everything else in real time provided your vocabulary is large enough.

Now, admittedly, I don’t know as much about Japanese specifically because I’ve never had a long conversation with a native speaker before, but when my friend sent me screenshots of his conversation with his Japanese friends regarding a question I asked him, everything I saw was essentially textbook-level casual Japanese. The only additional knowledge necessary to understand it in full was some minor Kansai dialect stuff that could have been guessed from context with enough experience.

[VegasVed]

@Pizh

What language do you reccomend? I’m thinking about learning either Chinese or German. (or perhaps Korean)

I don’t know if this was specifically directed at @Jonapedia, but here are my two cents in German, in case you’re interested:
Knowing English helps for vocabulary and to a point, grammar, but German is a gendered language with many grammatical quirks that will trip you up specifically when you rely on your knowledge of English.

Based on Jonapedia’s comparisons, it does sound like Mandarin would be the easiest pick for you specifically because of the apparent similarities between Thai and Mandarin that they mentioned and because you would already know a bunch of Kanji.

[Held]

@Jonapedia

Do you mean just for Japanese or for languages in general?

I meant in general. Mostly speaking for German textbooks I occasionally see from people who learn German here. And I’m talking about beginner to advanced here, not super specialized grammar that even most native speakers won’t know properly.

The phrasing is often weird and seems influenced by the language the books is written in, but not necessarily because it’s formal because I like speaking in a more formal way.

But to be honest, I haven’t seen a textbook of a language I know in while, so my memory might be off.

And for me it doesn’t really matter anyway because I only need text books until I understand enough to read/listen in the native language and can use monolingual dictionaries. I’ve learned most of what I know about English grammar from English sources and I’m hoping to do the same for Japanese.

[Jonapedia]

I just felt (from my experience anyway) that it wouldn’t be fair to write all textbooks off. Also, the textbook I mentioned didn’t cover obscure things only. However, I take it you’re a German native speaker? I haven’t had much experience with German textbooks, so I can’t really say, and in any case, my preferred publisher usually consults native speakers (or gets them to write their books, for that matter) and takes a guided immersion approach (tons of texts and dialogues with translations and explanations, so most of the learning happens in and from context with specific explanations for the hardest stuff).

That aside, to be fair, I think a lot of the most famous Japanese textbooks on the market right now are more than 10 years old, which could be problematic.

@Held

And for me it doesn’t really matter anyway because I only need text books until I understand enough to read/listen in the native language and can use monolingual dictionaries. I’ve learned most of what I know about English grammar from English sources and I’m hoping to do the same for Japanese.

Yeah, same here with French actually. I think transitioning to the target language as fast as possible and reading resources in that language is the best approach, especially because a lot of nuances don’t get explained to foreigner learners in the same way. I think textbooks are accelerators at best. You can’t and shouldn’t use them as your only source of language exposure.

[WeebPotato]

From what I understand, Genki textbooks were created by native speakers (published by Japan Times) and the 3rd edition (the one I have) has been released recently (April 2021?). My Japanese is not yet good enough to judge it properly, but it seems to be both popular and a product that a lot of effort has been put into .

Also, this is perhaps my first textbook outside of extracurricular language courses and school/university language classes so I don’t exactly have actual experience with textbooks.

[Held]

@Jonapedia

I just felt (from my experience anyway) that it wouldn’t be fair to write all textbooks off.

That wasn’t really my intention. I only said that because of @AndyMender comment automatically assuming that Tae Kim’s was wrong and Genki was right.

Like I said, I’m not really in a position to make a judgment on the matter, and it makes sense to assume a newspaper editor knows more about Japanese than a guy on the internet, but sometimes the guy on the internet actually knows better

I guess I have to keep studying and find out myself

[WeebPotato]

@Held

That wasn’t really my intention. I only said that because of @AndyMender comment automatically assuming that Tae Kim’s was wrong and Genki was right.

Apologies if my comment came across that way .

@Held

Like I said, I’m not really in a position to make a judgment on the matter, and it makes sense to assume a newspaper editor knows more about Japanese than a guy on the internet, but sometimes the guy on the internet actually knows better

Sometimes they do, indeed ;).

@Held

I guess I have to keep studying and find out myself

Same here! I have a long long way to go still!

[alo]

@EarleyGrave

To me she sounds like a nice older British lady

If I had to guess I’d say a nice older Indian or Sri Lankan lady just from the way she says things. I’ve had a few teachers over the years that sounded just like her.

It’s may be why the voice doesn’t bother me as much.