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Japanese textbook I'm writing out of boredom

 
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
Posts: 1231
Location: in front of my computer. always.

PostPosted: Fri May 07, 2010 1:58 am    Post subject: Japanese textbook I'm writing out of boredom Reply with quote

Last summer I went on a trip with my mom to Odessa, TX (where there is NOTHING), and out of the absolute lack of anything to do I started writing a Japanese textbook. I dropped it a while back since that's what I do with projects, but I'd like to start it up again and thought I'd post it here for input.

It's here on Google Docs.

I've put in a lot more effort in on the beginning than most of the rest (the first two chapters and the foreword were all once one chapter), and I eventually intend to have vocab lists and maybe exercises for each chapter, but I haven't gotten around to that. (In fact, if anyone wants to suggest useful vocab, feel free - it's not my forte at all. Just try to keep it basic!)

Thanks for any input!

(edit: I worked so hard to get those kana tables to look right in OpenOffice and Google Docs goes and messes them up completely... *grumble*)
(And apparently Google Docs doesn't like page breaks. Ah well.)
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Fri May 07, 2010 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yay!

I'm going to be taking Japanese pretty soon and this looks like a good starting point (I've done a bit of reading on the grammar/linguistics and form and such, but not as much in vocab or learning the various writing systems.

Thanks for posting this and I'll come back to read it thoroughly when I have time Smile
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2010 2:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks ^_^

Looking forward to comments from someone who's actually going to use it ^_^
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3po



Joined: 22 Oct 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

seems like a pretty tough challenge just cause of some boredom
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

3po wrote:
seems like a pretty tough challenge just cause of some boredom


Well, there wasnt anything else to do...
(my apostrophe key has died on me. >_>)
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3po



Joined: 22 Oct 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 19, 2010 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

you could've gone for walk
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Sat Jun 19, 2010 3:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This was probably more productive ^_^
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StrangeMagic
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 19, 2010 10:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tolkien_Freak, I've read like the first little part of it and I love it.

You use terminology which is very easy to understand.

Japanese is one of the languages that I would like to learn some time.

But thank you very much for sharing it, I shall be bookmarking it for future reference. =D
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 2:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yay, thank you very much!

Hopefully the rest is as good, since it's significantly less worked-on.
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3po



Joined: 22 Oct 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tolkien_Freak wrote:
This was probably more productive ^_^


i guess that depends on how healthy you are...

there are already a plethora of japanese textbooks/grammars, but no one can go for a walk for you
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

3po wrote:
there are already a plethora of japanese textbooks/grammars, but no one can go for a walk for you


Yeah, but they all suck!
(Part of my motivation is that I feel like almost every textbook out there completely misrepresents the way Japanese works.)
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3po



Joined: 22 Oct 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tolkien_Freak wrote:
Yeah, but they all suck!
(Part of my motivation is that I feel like almost every textbook out there completely misrepresents the way Japanese works.)


really?

even the ones written by native speakers?

seriously? that's quite an ego
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

3po wrote:
really?

even the ones written by native speakers?

seriously? that's quite an ego
It's not really too improbable that T_F hasn't run into any textbooks by native speakers of Japanese who are both excellent at speaking and writing English (or whatever T_F's native language is) and very good at writing textbooks about languages. Many people who are fluent in Japanese and good at writing textbooks are piss-poor at English; many people who are native Japanese-speakers and fluent English-speakers are piss-poor at writing textbooks.

I'm sure T_F wasn't being serious; but even if he was, he wasn't really saying there aren't any such books, but rather that he hasn't seen any. And that is, unfortunately, not far-fetched at all, especially considering the number of errors in many otherwise-excellent books on various subjects (a large number, when summed over all the books).
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:
I'm sure T_F wasn't being serious; but even if he was, he wasn't really saying there aren't any such books, but rather that he hasn't seen any. And that is, unfortunately, not far-fetched at all, especially considering the number of errors in many otherwise-excellent books on various subjects (a large number, when summed over all the books).


Yeah - it seems that most textbooks for Japanese are written by l2 speakers of Japanese, and they don't really seem to recognise the underlying system that Japanese verbs work on - most native Japanese speakers know the system well, but none of the native-English-speaking textbook writers seem to have learned the system at all.
I can only say I know it because I read a textbook about Classical Japanese, where the system is far more visible, by a native Japanese speaker. If you know the system exists, though, Japanese makes a lot more sense than otherwise - I've seen textbooks that treat almost every affix as its own entirely separate entity! And written by linguists! Öü.

(Again, this is all in my experience - not to say that no such textbooks exist, but merely that I have not seen any.)
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3po



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 1:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tolkien_Freak wrote:
(Again, this is all in my experience - not to say that no such textbooks exist, but merely that I have not seen any.)


you should probably get out more then:

http://books.google.com/books?id=hMW5_6YZbY0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=japanese+grammar&hl=en&ei=qwsiTIqaCsH7lwfw8pl_&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6wEwAA

http://books.google.com/books?id=oZMYsHvuhXIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=japanese+grammar&hl=en&ei=qwsiTIqaCsH7lwfw8pl_&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=4&ved=0CDwQ6wEwAw

http://books.google.com/books?id=8WWkPQAACAAJ&dq=japanese+grammar&hl=en&ei=qwsiTIqaCsH7lwfw8pl_&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBQ

http://books.google.com/books?id=Me7t9o-LLroC&printsec=frontcover&dq=japanese+grammar&hl=en&ei=qwsiTIqaCsH7lwfw8pl_&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBw

http://books.google.com/books?id=UuJzPgAACAAJ&dq=japanese+grammar&hl=en&ei=8wsiTNyPIMWqlAeU0eBn&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwADgK

http://books.google.com/books?id=sOoaIgAACAAJ&dq=japanese+grammar&hl=en&ei=8wsiTNyPIMWqlAeU0eBn&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAjgK

unless you were born in kyoto and raised by a grammarian, i seriously doubt that you can write a better grammar than a few of these folks...
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 3:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

3po wrote:
Barron's Japanese Grammar, 2nd edition, by Carol and Nobuo Akiyama
Schaum's Outline of Japanese Grammar by Keiko Uesawa Chevray and Tomiko Kuwahira
Japanese Grammar by Hideichi Ono, Hokuseido Press 1975
Handbook of Japanese Grammar by Masahiro Tanimori
Japanese grammar by Koichi Yamashita, Firma KLM Private Ltd., 1992
Japanese grammar by Yoshihiko Ikegami, LINCOM, 2000
Thanks.
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