Customer Reviews

Colloquial Japanese: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am now living in Japan, and am fluent in Japanese(among other languages), a holder of a degree in linguistics, and a professional language teacher, and tutor of Japanese. I think that this text is a great place to start your japanese studies, whether or not you prefer to use only Romaji, or authentic Japanese scripts (or a combination of the two, like myself.) This feature is what sets this book apart from similar priced texts like Hugo's and Teach Yourself, or the Berlitz Essential Japanese books.

Having succeded in learning in Japanese, I think people who 'demonize' romaji as a crutch, or useless are seriously misguided. Understanding new grammar rules, and sentence patterns can be mastered much faster, and with more confidence if the student isnt concerned about reading new characters correctly as well. Also, I dare anyone to look at japanese only text and not be a little intimidated. I think romaji is important for providing the beginner with the sense of achievement that is so often needed to overcome the inevitable frustrations that come with learning a new language. Viewed in this context it can be a valuable tool.

That said, even if spoken japanese is your only goal, if you plan to live or visit Japan (where japanese is spoken) kanji is a necessity if you realize it or not. It takes a lot of work, and is best started sooner than later.

I like the approach in this book because it presents the option of studying Kanji right from the first chapter, and avoids the common mistake of only teaching kanji individually, out of context like so many other 'kanji' specific texts.

---When helping others study, I often suggest that they work through the first few chapters, working primarily with the romaji grammar transcriptions first, and learning to transcribe them into Katakana* and Hiragana without looking. Once they begin to deal with the basics I have them go back and start to tackle the beginning chapters again without the romaji. This command of the meaning makes working through the japanese scripts less frustrating.

--Another issue I should address here is, that like many reviewers have noted is that vocabulary is not repeated very often within the chapters. I find this to be annoying, but ultimately it is the job of the student to practice, and practice the words on their own.-- if the book provided more chances for the revision of vacabulary, it probably wouldnt cover as much material overall.

The reason I give this book a four is that I find the mixed romaji-japanese script thing to be more annoying than its worth. Also, there are some typos, and that is just lazy editing.



*Katakana has more bang for buck in terms of practicality in Japan--- many foreign words are actually written in Katakana, if you can read it, or write it, its really written that way in Japan.-- Hiragana on the other hand is used for grammatical functions, and small words, while the bulk is written in Kanji--Hiragana is also sometimes used as tiny transcriptions which apear above kanji which tell japanese people how to pronounce them. (only for kids, or rarer Kanji, or odd pronunciations-- most Kanji are NOT accompanied by hiragana transcriptions) Its better than nothing to write gakusei, in hiragana, and kind of 'cute' for japanese friends, but when you read something real, its in Kanji. Which is why katakana is just more useful in the real world.

As opposed to another reveiw I'm past the 5th chapter and I've yet to find more than one instance where the vocabluary wasn't comprehensive. Then the word was still available in the glossery in back. In the forward the author does say that in later chapters they will deliberatly not include a comprehensive vocabulary because part of learning the language is learning to utilize the appropriate reference materials. But I haven't reached that point yet. Though, even then, the glossary in the back is comprehensive.

There are however a number of typos throughout. Most are rather obvious because they are nearly all in the vocabulary sections where romaji and kana are in parallel text. Thus, the romaji will nearly always be correct and kana characters will either be missing or misplaced. I'm sticking with a 5 though because I find these typos obvious and they didn't confuse me.

The rest of the book is great. I've found each chapter leads into the next very well with comprhensibile explanations and each section just the right size. Kana and Kanji are introduced from the beginning slowly and reinforced each chapter.

Unfortunatly, it makes everything so comprehensible that many will press on before fully learning each chapter. So I recomend going back to the beginning and reviewing everything at least once every other day until the book is complete. I'm doing this and every time I see some detail I missed all the other times. So it may feel tedious but it does pay off. Also, It's a good idea to keep each study period under 30 minutes so you don't burn out. Review, review, review.

My favorite feature about this book is it is not a "japanese for business" book. If your interest in learning japanese is more for leisure purposes then this is a really good self study course. It is also one of the very few courses that teaches Kanji from day one. So it is at least in the top 3 courses for those who feel learning to read japanese is a high priority.

My only real gripe is the CD is sold separatly. It isn't in any of the bookstores I go to, so I must order it.

This book is fantastic, I love the way it eases you into the different scripts and the realistic dialogs in each chapter. Unlike some other books it's also easy to follow and learn from. It teaches you some very usefull sentence structures right off the bat and then eases you into different grammatical concepts.

Of course Anyone using this book would find having a japanese dictionary, grammer reference and kanji dictionary very helpfull to fill in any gaps that pop up. (I really like the Oxford starter japanese dictionary, Oxford Japanese grammer & verbs and Kodansha Kanji learner's dictionary). This book does a way better job than my $100 university text and 2 other self study guides I have had the misfortune of wasting my money on but there are still a few topics that could use more in depth explainations.

I've had a year of formal Japanese instruction in university so I didn't have any problems grasping the early dialogs. Allthough It doesn't look like the author intends complete beginners to understand every word since there are some fairly advanced grammer in them. I guess some people will find this an interesting prelude and others will find it annoying. I personally liked it because it kept things interesting.

The only real complaint I have is there are quite a few obvious spelling errors throughout the book, hopefully they get corrected in a future edition.

In contrast most other reviewers, I have finished the whole book. I was initially drawn to this book because unlike many introductory Japanese books, hiragana, katakana, and kanji are introduced right away. I continue to believe that learning kanji is essential to learning Japanese as the building blocks of vocabulary, not something to tack on after learning the spoken language. For this reason, I think this book's concept is head and shoulders above the competition. However, it is very poorly executed. Especially in the later chapters, long lists of kanji appear at the end of each chapter, but most of them were not ever used in the chapter. Each chapter has one or two dialogues, concepts introduced, exercises, and vocabulary, however, there is virtually no overlap of vocabulary in the chapter. This means that you will see each word/character once or twice, but there will be around 50 new words. Somehow, the reader is supposed to be able to effectively learn 50 new words with little repetition. As one progresses, there can be some repetition (a word you saw once in chapter 8 reappears once in chapter 14), and so I can say that I have learned some vocabulary, but not very effectively. Same problem with the grammar--it is introduced in one small section of one chapter, and if you are lucky it will reappear in a sentence in a later chapter. A much much better way to learn would be to stick to a set list of words and one major concept per chapter and repeat these same words and concept in the dialogue, exercises, vocabulary, etc. I have used Random House Living Language books for French and German (they use this approach) and in 6 months was told by a German professor that I sounded like someone with 2 years study. (Unfortunately, the beginning Japanese in their series appears to be just romanji.) With Japanese, I feel like I barely grasped everything, and this overload of information forces more of a passive learning style--just try to get through the immense amount of material that passes by you just once. Since this book was so intense, I thought that I must have learned more that if I had used a seemingly easy book, for example Berlitz Essential Japanese. I was surprised that I could easily read everything in the last chapter and understand it, but that it included the same grammar concepts as in the Routlege book, but without the pain and overkill. Although the book looks like it would be too simple, I think that getting 100% of less material is better than getting 10% of much more material.

I am only up to the 5th unit in this book (of 15), and I have several complaints to make about it.

The book includes many conversations (which are included on the CD as spoken by native Japanese speakers). Each unit introduces at least one new conversation and with that a new vocabulary list. The vocabulary list follows the conversation transcription in the book for you to practice. I have begun to found that many vocabulary lists do not include the full set of words required to understand the preceding conversation - true for not only the initial conversation for each unit, but other activities within the book. This leaves me somewhat frustrated and confused and second guessing my learning ability.

In contrast, the book introduces a fairly efficient way of introducing new characters and kanji in a way that helps you to recognise, remember, and utilize them easily. Initially very few words are written with kana nor kanji. Slowly, romaji is subsituted for kana, and kana for kanji, and their use is sparodic. One same syllable may be in the same text romanized and written using kana or kanji, which I found personally to be a clever way of introducing new characters.

I don't think that the book provides enough activities and thorough explanations for you to fully grasp the concepts introduced.

I do think that the CD included is very useful. I believe that listening to them and repeating these tracks is crucial in understanding spoken Japanese. You may know structure, grammar, and have an extensive vocabulary, but without hearing native Japanese speakers converse, it's quite useless.

This book isn't bad. It is useful if you stick with it but there are so many other resources out there. You can get better study guides from free websites.

For the money, you cant go wrong with this one. The books and tapes cover material at fast but easy to follow pace. The method really helps the means of retention. It's a great buy for any beginner.

*i have bought teachyourself, barrons and pimsleur but if you want to teach your self how to read japanese, this is on que with teachyourself-maybe better. if i may offer some advice to any would-be language enthusiast, pimsleur is just spoken word(no booklet)so i recommend it for getting 'the bare bones'-so to speak-of how the language sounds and its basic structure. listen to it when you go to sleep, over and over and you will soon develop a very basic understanding of japanese. teachyourself is also good but it has way too much romanji so you cannot learn how to read japanese(i'm talking about the regular course,i haven't tried the "complete japanese" course), but for a fast basic course that will take you beyond pimsleur. besides it is better having a booklet right there for easy access rather than going through the separate DVD lessons hopelessly trying to find what you want to review. barrons is VERY good for the word order and colloquial is best for learning all three. why? because it has the dialogs written in japanese, then in ramonji, then in english so you can figure out what one syllabary sounds like and what sequence of syllabaries mean what word in english. it also covers hiragana, katakana, and kanji so your set for all three. READ!!!--> the one drawback is that the booklet and the dvd usually come separate so be careful and read the full title of what your buying so you dont have to wait and pay for separate shipping and handling for the DVD and the booklet.oh and good luck and study hard.