What should I get out of Genki?

Actually the difference between Second Edition and Third Edition is not really that big. Some grammar explanations are changed, they took out some outdated vocabulary and some of the pictures are also changed. I think the old edition had cds with the audio included while you will need an app for the audio in the new edition.

I see. Well I’ll be getting the Second Edition then as it is half the price at the stores I could find. Is there any place where I can find a comprehensive list of differences?

And is it vital to obtain both the textbook and workbook?

Check this Youtube review of the 3rd edition before committing to buy the 2nd one… It seems that the 3rd edition is better organized. Luckily, I got it back when I was in Japan in March rather than buying it for “extortionist” prices back in the States :joy:

https://youtu.be/V1BrZCojIMk

Was just going to say the same thing. That GitHub site is so useful.

Wow did not know of the genki github site and i really wish i found out before the last 3 chapters :weary: still bookmarking this comment and will probably check it out for later!

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I managed just fine with the 2nd edition

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I see. Thank you very much. The prices around my parts are quite high too. (around equivalent of 50 USD), so I will have to consider the options carefully.

One last thing I want to check (if anyone can help) is, is there any point in getting Genki I, if I am already familiar with all of the lessons from Imabi Beginner 1.

I would say it really depends on your native and previously learnt languages. I suppose that most of you are native English speakers, but if you have ever learnt other, specific languages then learning Japanese grammar is significantly easier. Let me explain it furher.

Japanese is basically an agglutinative language which is just a dumb name to express that it generally conjugates everything. every. single. time. It also has very few irregular verbs - compared to languages such as English, German or Spanish or other isolating/fusional languages - and also word order basically is just as insignificant as an ant (sorry ants :frowning: )

I am a native Hungarian speaker, which language uses an agglutinative structure, and it does save up a lot of time understanding the concepts of grammar simply because of my language is built up of similar grammatical rules - but still Hungarian grammar is like the literal hell for English speakers, if you google it then it will consecutively show up on the lists of the hardest languages.

But don’t get me wrong, it does not mean that Japanese grammar would be (too) hard. It takes some time to get used to conjugating, particles, etc. and that’s why it is important to do every exercise in the earlier phases of language learning. It’s needless to say, the only way to build up a good base is to practice as much as you can, but sometimes if you feel confident about a section, it is okay to just go on. If you feel bored about a specific part then practicing it will be sort of hard, just because of the lack of motivation. In these cases you can just go ahead and some days later, maybe a week, you can just get back to that specific part and do it with more excitement.

That’d be my advice I hope it helped you. Wishing you luck!

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What you are describing is that Genki is a Beginner’s textbook and Genki 2 brings you up to maybe pre-intermediate. And then Tobira is a true intermediate/upper-intermediate textbook.

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Wow, thanks for the rec! This is great.

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I studied Genki last summer since I was coming up on my first year of University (Japanese major) and wanted to see if I could test out of the first year if I crammed the textbook. I thought it was going pretty well, a lot of the stuff I had already picked up from general grammar studying and anime. I was unfamiliar with stuff at the end and I had to memorize some conjugations, but I thought I could skip first year Japanese without too many problems. They ended up telling me that since I hadn’t had any conversation practice, I should do the first year, which was frustrating since it’s expensive, but hey, nothing you can do.

What I didn’t expect was just how much what I’d learned was not ingrained in my head. Anything from using the wrong conjugations constantly to forgetting です to even writing most of the characters wrong. Sure, I was way ahead of most of the class, so it’s been boring, but I had no idea how much not doing the exercises or conversations or writing out the sentences had hurt me, and I’m so glad they put me in the first year. (The biggest one was actually that I didn’t know how to write hardly any of the Genki I kanji, which I paid no mind to since at the time I was level 35 in WaniKani and could recognize any of them).

So yeah, do the exercises, out loud if you can, practice conversation, buy the workbook if you can and fill it out, do the listening, be sure you’re writing the hiragana correctly (I’d just been copying from the basic computer font which is totally different from how you should write). No need to be religious on vocab but you should definitely know all the adjectives and verbs. And see if you can find a way to practice with other learners or a native. Hellotalk is a good app for that

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Yes that’s right, but I feel like a lot of Japanese learners have the misconception that Genki I and II is all they need to learn Japanese (it may be the case depending on your goals though).

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I think that the workbook is essential. If you cannot afford, there are PDF versions that can be found on the web but they are probably violating the copyright…

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