Japanese Language Discussion

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I'm creating this thread for Japanese Language discussion. Trying to keep it all in one place and make it easier for myself and others to look for stuff related to Japanese. I'll be posting news, book reviews, questions and other stuff in here so keep an eye on the thread. Feel free to post about stuff yourself.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

NEWS: The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) registration is now open.

Create an account and register at: https://www.jflalc.org/jlpt/.

I've already registered for Level 2, of course! (missed the registration last year grrrr.)

I'm taking it in the NYC test center so tell me if you're planning to take it there too and maybe we can meet up!

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

BOOK REVIEW: A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

Let me start by saying that "dictionary" is kind of a misleading title for this book. The entries are ordered alphabetically and it's often bookish in its explanations. However, the authors do more than just tell you what different grammar structures mean. They include lots of usage tips, point out common mistakes people make, and compare each entry with similar entries. This is a must-have book for almost any Japanese language student. I bought this recently and have already gone through it cover to cover 3 times in a row. It's that good.

Now that we're done with the good, let's get to the bad. First of all, the book is not a textbook. It is best suited for people who want to check out some expressions more in-depth or already have a grasp of basic grammar and want to deepen their understanding of them. A total beginner will get nothing from it by reading it cover to cover. It also tends to sound bookish like I mentioned earlier, which makes it a drag to read, and finally, but not least worst, is that the book uses Romaji. No self-respected Japanese language book should ever use Romaji.

[Cthulhu]

I took the JLPT level 1 in 2004/5 and passed with a ~80%. I wouldn't have been able to do that without a couple of study books, as a good deal of the material on that test is "academic" stuff that you don't use in daily conversation. I'm guessing that some of the material on the level 2 is like that as well. I wish I could remember the name of the company that made the study guides I bought, as they were quite good, but I gave them to a friend that was prepping and no longer have them.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I'm using books from Unicom and Aruku for the test. They seem pretty good to me. Some people mentioned the Kanzen Master books in another thread, which I should check out by myself to see what the big deal is about. If I do, I may come back to post some comparisons, but I'm damn lazy to go all the way to the city to buy books. That and I was just at Kinokuniya two weeks ago and bought "Nihongo Through Newspaper Articles" and "Living Japanese" (2 hours of interviews with native speakers.) I'm just half way through them now. Gotta finish them.

[Aru-san]

What are the SAT Subject Tests in Japanese with Listening like? Are they similar to the JLPT in any way, because I'm going to take that as one of my Subject Tests for the SATs.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

You can find the content from previous JLPT tests here. Click on the level you want to see at the top of the screen. The lower the level, the more difficult. 4 is the easiest and 1 is the most difficult.

I took a look at some of the questions for that SAT subject test. Click here to see.Wait for the PDF to load, go to the search box and type Japanese.

From the sample questions, I'd say that SAT subject test is somewhere in between JLPT 3 and 4.

[GaijinPunch]

First of all, the book is not a textbook. It is best suited for people who want to check out some expressions more in-depth

Yes, hence the title "Dictionary" in the title. It's a reference, not a text book... not in the least. It never tries to be more. This, the Intermedaite version and the Advanced Version are about the only high level texts you'll find with some type of English in them. The rest are straight Japanese. On that note, they are all aimed at beginners to an extent. Great books though.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I'm somewhat stupid though because I bought all three for the purpose of sitting down and reading them. It cost me a pretty penny and even though I knew a lot of the stuff in all three books, I learned a lot from them. The Advanced book was particularly difficult to read because the authors just delve too deep and some of the examples are plain crazy complex.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Book Review: A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar

The first book is awesome and this one improves on it in several key areas. First of all, all the Romaji is gone and replaced with Furigana, which is a huge improvement in the readability department. Then you have the all new content, which are all still really common expressions, but there are a lot more examples and there's a 150 page appendix at the end covering all sorts of useful stuff like prefixes, suffixes, counters, etc. This book just gives you more great stuff in greater quantity.

As for issues, I'd say that the book sometimes has too many examples. A page and a half is just too much for some entries and I doubt most people would read all of them. The examples also use more advanced Kanji and are more complex in structure, so people jumping in from the first book might have a somewhat hard time reading it.

[GaijinPunch]

I'm somewhat stupid though because I bought all three for the purpose of sitting down and reading them. It cost me a pretty penny and even though I knew a lot of the stuff in all three books, I learned a lot from them. The Advanced book was particularly difficult to read because the authors just delve too deep and some of the examples are plain crazy complex.

My only problem w/ the Advanced book is that there should never be furigana in any book that says "Advanced" on the cover. And yes, each point is beaten to a pulp, but it's still an excellent reference for very "practical" Japanese. It's not a bad reference to sit down, pick one, and study. But no, it's not a text book. I'm a bit confused why you thought it was.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Oh no, I knew all along they weren't textbooks . I just wanted to point out to people thinking about purchasing them that they're not ideal by themselves for self study. My reading them like textbooks was just because I like getting my money's worth out of my books.

[GaijinPunch]

Try picking one pattern every 2-3 days. I'll admit though, some in the advanced book aren't that advanced, and some I've never seen before (even in the JLTP-1 prep books). There's a similar book which is Japanese only (and published by a Chinese company if I'm not mistaken). It's of similar format, but Japanese only. There is also a J/C version of the same book, but of course I can't comment on the Chinese examples.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Right now, I'm going through the basic book one more time before I go back to 2kyuu grammar. Study for the 2kyuu is progressing nicely. I would say I'm not quite ready for it yet since I need to work on my listening and reading speed/comprehension, but hopefully, I'll be able to score more than 60% in those areas by the time of the test. I'm planning to pick up a couple more books for the listening and reading this week. Any recommendations? I have all the Unicom 2kyuu books and other reading material like Nihongo Through Japanese Articles.

[GaijinPunch]

I don't remember my 2-kyuu texts at all, but the one book that single-handled allowed me to pass 1-kyu was this one. It looks like these jackasses only make 1-kyuu books though. I didn't try their other books, although I own one.

Since the writing/grammar is half the test, it really does make sense to pound that. They have come up with ways to make the kanji/vocab part a bit of a whore as well, so you really need to know your kanji inside and out. I can't remember if they're as tricky on the level 2 as the 1...it's been 10 years (ugh) but I do recall having problems. The lamest one is getting a sentence, with part of a word in hiragana underlined. Then you get 5 more sentences, with the same phonetic combination of hiragana underlined. You have to choose which one has the same kanji.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I'm very confident I'll score 80% or more in the 2kyuu vocab and grammar parts because those are my strengths. My weaknesses are the listening part, which I know from doing my Unicom listening drill book (about 50% right), and reading because I'm a slow reader, so I'm putting more effort in those for the time being. I'm still hammering at the vocab and grammar, tho.

I broke down and went to Kinokuniya today. Stayed there for like an 1 1/2 hours and browsed through most of their JLPT 1 and 2 books. I saw the パターンで学ぶ series of books and you're right, they only do 1kyuu stuff. I picked the following stuff:

- The 2008 JLPT Level 1&2 Questions and Correct Answers. I have the 2006 and 2007 books, which I haven't done yet but will definitely do before taking the test. I have however, taken a glance at the contents to get an idea of how the actual 2kyuu test looks like. Really useful books!

- 日本語能力試験1級に出る重要単語集 ("Collection of important vocab that appears in the level 1 JLPT.") I like how it explains the words, gives you example usage for each one and even has exercises to boot. The exercises, though are not the best, but I'm buying this to learn new vocab.

- 完全マスター２級日本語能力試験読解問題対策 ("Complete master JLPT level 2 reading comprehension counter plan.") This is a pure drill book. They pile up the readings and all you do is read and answer some questions. Pretty much like the test. It would've been nice if they included explanations after you finish each reading like in Unicom's level 2 book, but you get more readings here.

Total $80 bucks. Ouch.

Edit: those pesky Kanji problems you mentioned only appear in 1kyuu.

[GaijinPunch]

Yes, that style of question is unique to the 1-kyuu, and really, really suck.

The one thing I hate about a lot of the books, is that they are 問題集, and nothing more. A collection of questions and answers. They very much fall into the Japnese style of education: memorization of facts, and not learning how to work the problems out. If you want to get a flavor for the test, they're probably okay, but if you want to really learn, they should be avoided for the most part.

[Cthulhu]

Yes, that style of question is unique to the 1-kyuu, and really, really suck.

The one thing I hate about a lot of the books, is that they are 問題集, and nothing more. A collection of questions and answers. They very much fall into the Japnese style of education: memorization of facts, and not learning how to work the problems out. If you want to get a flavor for the test, they're probably okay, but if you want to really learn, they should be avoided for the most part.

Oh the joy of 問題集. Can't get enough of em.

One book of them was helpful for me, but I didn't really need (or want) more than that. They definitely helped with prepping for the listening section, as most of the problems were in a certain "style" - a conversation between two people, a good amount of changing details (I thought it was like this, but it was actually like this - and so on), and occasionally trying to mislead you at the very end by changing an early piece of info.

[TLB]

I hate to do this, but UFO's avatar compels me so:

Why did they change Gatts's name to Gutts?

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I read the fan translations and they're very inconsistent with the naming. A lot of the characters suffer from name switching all the time like Pack or Puck or Pakku and Shierke or Silke. I personally just think of the romanized names whenever I see the characters. As for Guts, it could be the fan translators just changing to the official names used in the Dark Horse translation.

[TLB]

Sweet, thanks for the info ^_~

[GaijinPunch]

My avatar does nothing for you?

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Book Review:　日本語擬態語辞典 (Nihongo Gitaigo Jiten)

The title of this book translates as "Japanese Onomatopoeia Dictionary," and for those not in the known, Japanese Onomatopoeia is much more versatile than English's. It can describe animal sounds and other sound effects but can also describe someone lazying off (udauda,) a round slippery surface (tsurutsuru,) speaking a foreign language fluently (perapera) and much more. This book defines 181 words and for each word there is an accompanying image to help you remember it. The images are very funny. This is a nice book for beginners as well as intermediate learners of Japanese since onomatopoeia words are used very often in conversational Japanese. A recommended buy for the $5 it cost me and probably useful if you want to impress your Japanese friends by showing them how "perapera" your Japanese is.

[TLB]

My avatar does nothing for you?

Uh...sorry, GP. Kinda looks like...Budd Dwyer...?

[Magic Knight]

x

[TLB]

Oh, GOD that was a long time ago. That dude. That dude.

[jonny5]

any feedback on the rosetta stone program for a beginner?

im finally getting off my ass and getting into it and was wondering if anybody else has any experience with it, and perhaps advice if there might be something better out there for me to start with

at this point im not to worried about written, my main intention is to get my verbal comprehension up and maybe work on spoken a bit too.....

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahyDYHsZ6Ok

Take a look yourself and decide whether you like it or not. I tried my friend's copy of level 1&2, but at the time, I was well beyond of most of the material they offered, so it wasn't worth the investment for me. There's a lot of learning to be done if you can pay the price ($500 for all three levels.) I personally like using books because you get more bang for your buck at a cheaper price and if you want to get far into Japanese, you won't do it with Rosetta Stone.

[Ash Riot]

I can vouch for that. I played around with Rosetta Stone while I was in the Army, because you can't do shit on government computers besides check government email accounts. The program is no good for me, but then again, I already have a pretty strong grasp of Japanese before I used it. Probably the best way for a beginner to pick up Japanese conversation on their own is watching anime WITHOUT subtitles because the dialog usually isn't very complicated. If that's too easy for you, you can move on to variety shows.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I personally don't think that beginners would get much benefit from watching anime without subtitles. When I began studying Japanese, I watched raw anime pretty often and almost didn't understand anything. I don't think I'm reaping a lot of benefit from that even now. There's certainly a lot more time wasting than learning when I'm watching anime. Plain old studying really hard is the key for becoming proficient, and I can guarantee anyone that it is super effective.