Customer Reviews

Beginning Japanese: Part 1 (Yale Language Series) (Pt. 1)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I purchased this book (Beginning Japanese Prt.1) after having read many favorable reviews of it. I must say that I am quite pleased with what this has to offer for me, as a seasoned beginner when it comes to Japanese. This book will give you many practice conversations to try out and rip apart to create your own sentences, which is extremely helpful when trying to learn the structure of a Japanese sentence. There is a TON of practice given through this book, and as any language learner will tell you, if you don't practice you don't learn.

If there is a problem with this text, it would the pronunciation and Romanizing of some of the Japanese Hiragana/Katakana. According to this book (published in 1962), there is a Hiragana/Katakana symbol for SI. Well, in the following text, they explain that it is ACTUALLY pronounce SHI (not "see" as it appears). If you look in any newer dictionary, they either omit SI or put SHI(SI) for the symbol in question as the Romanization. 2 more examples would be HU (pronounced more like FU) and TI (pronounced CHI). Had this book been written more recently or recently revised, all of the words in this text which use TI,TU,SI,HU etc.. would have been written with CHI,TSU,SHI,FU respectively. So any Romanization you see after learning from this book may look a little weird at first as it would use this method for Romanization, not the method in this text. Reading this text after having learned the pronounciations of Hiragana/Katakana, not Romanizations, made it kind of difficult for me to read the words properly without a little extra thought speak the practice samples and then to be able to write the practice converations in Hiragana/Katakana (a great way to practice and learn the pronunciations of the Hiragana/Katakana symbols... good luck with Kanji).

Even with this little Romanization problem, this book gives you what you need to learn the Japanese language effectively; lots of GREAT explanations, lots of vocabulary and TONS of practice. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn to SPEAK (not read) Japanese. I also recommend you learn to speak then pick up another text to learn to read Japanese, as just speaking the language may prove difficult to cope with if you plan on travelling to Japan.

Drills drills drills! If you work through the ubiquidous "Japanese For Busy People" published by AJALT without having perused this tome of a textbook, then you're doing yourself a huge disservice. Jorden and Chaplin here present one of the most exercize-intensive books you are likely to find, and any beginning or intermediate student of Japanese knows that is a good thing. Every chapter contains hundreds of example sentences and drills, each one just slightly more advanced than the one before, and while there is next to no kana here, consider it a boot-camp workout for anyone who wants to speak this most difficult language. When I recently went through my textbooks to thin them out, this was one book which I did not even consider getting rid of. Even though it's for beginners there is enough practice here to warm up second and third year students as well. This is really a classic text and workbook which deserves enduring status. You want to know about Japanese? This is probably not the best choice - but if you want to speak Japanese, you could do no better than this exhaustive collection.

This book was first published in 1962 and has been completely updated in the same author's "Japanese, the Spoken Language". I highly recommend that book and can't quite understand why this book is still in print.

If you're going to study Japanese with any rigor, this is the book you need. Some people will try to use "Japanese for Busy People" or some other superficial junk like that. Trust me - find this book (volumes 1 and 2), use the tapes, find a teacher who is willing to use the book, and study it. I've investigated A LOT of time and energy looking into Japanese text books and this one has consistently proven its superiority over the competition. The American Foreign Service uses it to train its diplomats; Middlebury College uses it for their introductory courses at its summer language schools; and I have seen rapid language acquisition by all who have used it in conjunction with diligent study.

I don't recommend this book lightly. If you are not serious about learning the language and don't plan on putting in long hours of hard work, than get a phrase book and enjoy some other aspect of Japanese life. That said, if you use the tapes (and I can't underestimate the importance of using the tapes), do the exercises, and practice, practice, practice, your investment will be rewarded. The ultimate result of your efforts will be the ability to speak without thinking. Just as you think about the content, not the mechanics of the language, when you speak English, you will have the ability to do the same in Japanese. Since you will have an automatic ability to manipulate the framework/structure of the language, your efforts as you move forward can focus on vocabulary acquisiton. And since the core will be established, your ability to use the new words you pick up will be dramatically increased.

There is an expresion in Japanese, which basically says "the basics are vital", and this book is a brilliant manifestation of that sentiemnt. Will you be able to discuss philosophy in Japanese after using this set? Of course not, but you will have the fundamental grounding in the language that will enable you to pursue your studies in whatever field in which you specialize.

Caveats to consider:

1) the book is in romaji because its focus is on rapid acquisition of spoken language skills, not reading. Speaking, reading and writing are all different skills that are not always complementary. The same author has a highly recommended book called, if memory serves, "Reading Japanese" which is supposed to be used once you hit chapter 10 of the Beginning Japanese book. More hard work.

2) Some of the language is a little "old". Your teacher should alert you to the phrases that aren't commonly used anymore. That said, the grammtical structures don't change.

Welcome to the never ending, often frustrating, and very addictive world of Nihongo. Good luck.

I used this series to learn Japanese before going to Japan. Although I started from zero, my grammar was pretty fluent in about 5 months. After having basic speaking out of the way, I started studying reading and writing. And, a year later was able to pass the top level of the Japanese Proficiency Exam. I found that once I was a fluent speaker, the writing came much easier.

On the other hand, I have known scores and scores of people who have studied Japanese from a written grammar based approach who have never learned to speak. Even after many years of diligent study.

The Romaji in this series I think is a good thing, because it plays well into the method used in this series. It results in a speaking and listening focused approach, rather than a reading/writing focused approach. If that's what you're looking for, then this series is a good fit.

The method recommends only using the book in order to help yourself understand what the tapes say and then immediately put it down. The exercises, in fact, should be done with the book completely closed. I can't recommend enough using this approach to quickly learn fluency in the language.

This book however, has an updated version, it seems. Published in the late '80s.

Another great alternative would be the Pimsleur approach.

Jordan's book (and tapes which are also available to accompany the text) are uncompromising and scholarly. Indeed, there are no kana in this series. The emphasis here is on pronunciation, *lengthy* drills, and thorough explanations which are best suited to those students who already have a good grasp on the principles that hold together English - i.e., sentence structure, verb tenses, particle functions, etcetera. This is probably not the best book for those who just want to learn "tourist" Japanese - there are no pictures, and the dialogues are not necessarily built around familiar travel/business situations. For me, the book has been an excellent supplement to the "Japanese For Busy People" series used in my classes at Loyola. The explanations fill in the "blanks" that my native-Japanese teacher is unable to address due to her limitations in English. Bottom line: highly recommended for the serious student of Japanese!

Drills drills drills! If you work through the ubiquidous "Japanese For Busy People" published by AJALT without having perused this tome of a textbook, then you're doing yourself a huge disservice. Jorden and Chaplin here present one of the most exercize-intensive books you are likely to find, and any beginning or intermediate student of Japanese knows that is a good thing. Every chapter contains hundreds of example sentences and drills, each one just slightly more advanced than the one before, and while there is next to no kana here, consider it a boot-camp workout for anyone who wants to speak this most difficult language. When I recently went through my textbooks to thin them out, this was one book which I did not even consider getting rid of. Even though it's for beginners there is enough practice here to warm up second and third year students as well. This is really a classic text and workbook which deserves enduring status. You want to know about Japanese? This is probably not the best choice - but if you want to speak Japanese, you could do no better than this exhaustive collection.

It was hard to rate this book with stars. For grammar and sequencing I would give it 5 stars. But it's written in ROMAJI! I found that extremely frustrating when I had to use this book in langauge school. IF ONLY THERE WERE A KANA VERSION!

This book(and its second volume), when used in conjuction with Reading Japanese by the same authors, is amazing. Together they contain 35 lessons. They start off with an introduction that teaches you thoroughly how to pronounce Japanese sounds, and a lesson containing some useful phrases like sumimasen-excuse me. They start with dialogues at the beginning of each lesson, which are great because in between the sentences they show vocabulary and explain well enough how the grammar constructions in the following sentence work. After the dialogues they sometimes have specialized vocabulary that is usually separated for a reason and is of the same subject(e.g. family, languages). Then there are notes explaining peculiarities in the dialogues. After that, Grammatical Notes explain in depth some new constructions, all of which are used in the dialogue; there are usually between 5 and 10 of these notes in a lesson. Then, the drills! There are a load of drills and exercises that solidify the grammar and vocabulary into your head. They start out with around 8 drills in the early lessons, but in the later ones, they sometimes have as many as 15!(and these are long drills, mind you, at least 8 questions each)But don't be discouraged; you just have to say the answers aloud, since the book doesn't teach any writing and there's no point in practing roumaji. Finally, following the drills, there are exercises. One exercise is usually about as long as a drill, but there only about 3 of them per lesson, so every time I start a new lesson, I can repeat the exercises from the previous one without taking too long.
If there HAD to be anything to complain about, it is certainly NOT the romanization--that's easy to get used to--but that the font(all of it; Enlish/Japanese) is ever so slightly annoying, but nothing to worry about at all. If you want to become fluent at speaking and have a great foundation and basic knowledge of writing(using Reading Japanese) that can be continued with other books, this is a great choice.

Let me start by saying that this is my favorite Japanese learning text. But then I'm not a typical Japanese learner. I'm an amateur linguist and like my language materials to be full of detailed explanations of how the language is used. Details that others would find boring or difficult to understand, I find fascinating and enjoy exploring. If you want to learn the spoken language well, then this is the text for you. If you want to learn the language quickly or easily, then this is not the text for you. Also, if you have never learned a foreign language before, then skip this one which is full of unexplained linguistics terms.

The most unique thing about this book is that it marks tone. You may have heard that Japanese does not have stressed syllables (as English does), but instead varies pitch. This book explains how that works and every word and sentence is marked to show you how to alter your pitch. If you just want to learn to communicate and don't mind having an accent, these marks just make things more complicated. But if you want to perfect your pronunciation, these marks are invaluable.

One of the problems with this book is that there is no introduction, of any kind, to the written language. In fact the romanization used here is a very rare style. The author made a specific choice to use a romanization designed to reflect the categorization of the kana (the characters that the Japanese use to spell out words). Unfortunately, this style of romanization used in this book never caught on and is quite different from the romanization used in Japan (it's not even used for computer input, for which it seems ideally suited).

Based solely on explanation and practice of the rules of Japanese (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc.) I give this book 5 stars and rate it as a must for any serious Japanese learner's library. However, as a means to learn how to "get by" in Japan, this book is terrible.