I Am Making Japanese Lessons

.endless

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Hello all. For those of you that want to learn Japanese, but don't really know where to start, I am writing lessons on my blog. I hope that you can learn from it, as I try to explain everything as thoroughly as possible.

It appears that I lack the amount of posts to link to my website. You can find it at:

theaspkid . com

I really hope this helps you guys out :)

**EDIT**
I AM LEARNING TOO - I TEACH PEOPLE THINGS AS I LEARN THEM.
 
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Alas, another person on the net trying to teach Japanese and neglect to mention that they are just learning it themselves. I looked over a couple of your 'lessons"... are you looking for help, or just trying to present this blog as an authoritative learning resource?
 
What do you mean by that? I mention that I am learning it on my website. I can edit my original post if you want. This is mostly to fortify my learning as well. All of my Japanese friends I have asked say my lessons are accurate. A lot of the information I post up is based out of text books that I use. It's more of a collaborative learning resource, and I plan to go in whatever which-way that the readers want me to. Do you think I need help? You never said whether my "lessons" were structured well, if there was anything wrong in them, etc. etc. Next time you should try not to sound like as much of a dick when another person is just trying to help people and themselves. Reply saying what you actually meant and what not please.
 
I'm sorry, I didn't see the disclaimer on your site; I started at the recent posts and read through a few of them, but the dialogue and description just reminded me of so many other "teach yourself Japanese" guides written by people with only a surface level understanding of the language and try to regurgitate what they've learned.

That sounds bad. Let me say that I think that teaching is a good way to check one's own understanding (as they say, to teach is to learn twice). However, there is a lot of misinformation out there, and these "guides" are the prime source for a lot of mistakes and bad habits that plague beginners.

The order of your lessons is fine, but the way the individual lessons are structured are a bit jarring. For instance, I wouldn't provide "direct translations" into English, because although it shows that there is a difference in word order, it wrongly gives the impression that you can directly translate Japanese into English this way. It leads to a hobbled understanding of how the language works, and unnatural translations.

You spend almost an entire lesson on particles, but just talk about postpositions. I don't know of anyone that refers to them as such. There are other things I picked up on, including your incomplete description of the particles (particularly "ga," which you describe as something that is "known." This explanation is woefully inadequate). You then briefly threw in a short paragraph about verb conjugation, when that could be several lessons all on its own. In another lesson, you again give a brief list of conjugations, but for an irregular verb and neglect to label it as such.

Dashes. I saw Undrentide left a comment about your use of the dash, and how - and ー are totally different. In lessons 4 and 5, you use the ー liberally. Often in English, people will add "-san" to the end of someone's name, including the dash. In Japanese, there is no dash. Also, when you have "Tanaka" spelling out his name and his company, you put them in; this marks an elongated vowel, and is not used in this way. Even further, you wrote とうきょう as とーうーきーよーう. きょ is actually a single sound in Japanese, and this betrays a misunderstanding of the underlying structure of Japanese sounds.

Of course, I can't fault you for reproducing unnatural dialogue or inaccurate information, and I don't mean to come off as a dick (necessarily), but I have grown cynical and crotchety when I see such bad habits copied and preached.
 
This is the kind of criticism that helps. I have edited all of my information with what you have said, and in pointing out my mistakes, you have allowed me to remember them better and change what I am putting up there. I plan to cover verb conjugation later, I just put that in there for reference. Thank you for pointing out that ー is an elongated vowel, and when it says, "た-か-な" that is him spelling out his name while pointing to his business card, to show Smith what it looks like, etc. It's a real life example I guess you could say. I took out my explanation of が until I can figure out more about it. I also planned to stop doing direct translations in the following lessons, I just did that so people can get the sentence structure in their head. Anyone using these lessons, I would use them as more of a reference if anything. If you are serious about learning the language, but textbooks about it.
 
If you need something to show たなか (not たかな, as you have in your post) is saying his name slowly, then use dots instead of dashes. た・な・か.

And creating "lessons" that "teach" something you have little or no real grasp of yourself actually does little more than to present the danger of spreading misinformation to others. And don't bother pointing out what a cynical and crotchety dick I am because that is a point of common knowledge around here.
 
And creating "lessons" that "teach" something you have little or no real grasp of yourself actually does little more than to present the danger of spreading misinformation to others..

Well yeah, but someone who trusts a beginner-made website without any doubt... kinda deserves to be taught crap.
After all, if a person is persistent, he'll go get himself some books with the right information... if he gives up, does it matter whether he will forget correct or incorrect information over the course of ten days? :D

On the other hand I don't see how the author & op would learn anything from writing such lessons, I personally see it as a waste of time.

@ .endless

You should learn something new instead of writing down stuff you already know (more or less).
 
Thank you guys, I appreciate what you have said. I made a post just now stating my original plans for the website, and some other things.

@ Derfel
I do this because repetition helps me to learn things. I learned hiragana by writing each character down 40 times, then testing myself. Each one I got wrong, I would write down another 20 times (sometimes 40). Repetition is just the way that I get things to stick into my brain, and it works for me. What may seem like a waste of time to some, is a learning process to others.
 
I'm just wondering... Instead of making the blog into "lessons for others", can you just make it a place to show how you're learning Japanese and your progress (what you've learned so far) as well as to ask corrections or suggestions if readers find anything to say about...?
Just my thought.
😌
 
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@undrentide
That's a good suggestion. I may end up doing that shortly. It appears that I do not have much readers anyways, and that is actually what I kind of wanted to end up doing anyways haha. I am basically trying to learn as much as possible, and as accurate as possible.
 
You would be better off just trying to post blog entries in Japanese so you have something to go back on and see if your progressing at all.

I have since abandoned my blog spot but it did help.
 
If you want to write blog in Japanese, definetely Lang-8 site would help it. Natives will correct your mistakes, it makes miracles for me. ^^
 
Well, I personally watch raw anime. So two birds with one stone. Its interesting and a good method to measure your knowledge. Of course its probably a bad idea to try to measure by watching an anime with loads of mythologycal vocabulary and psychological terms.
 
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