Japanese, the Spoken Language: Part 1

Here's my testimony. It will probably be marked "not helpful" by people who are determined not to like JSL 1. However, I did want to share this discovery with people who are truly looking to learn. My accelerated Japanese class used this book. I dropped the class after a month, overwhelmed from learning the spoken and written languages concurrently. For some reason I kept the book, and it sat in my collection. I then picked up "The Structure of the Japanese Language" by Susumu Kuno and taught myself the kana using the Tuttle books. I was surprised to find that Kuno referenced Jorden's JSL! I had already paid for the JSL book so what was there to lose? There I went again, back into JSL. Here is what I found after reading the introduction to JSL 1(very important to read the authors' introduction) and then applying the techniques. Jorden approach works. She tells you what she's going to do, why she's going to do it and then proceeds to actually do it. That's why the inroduction to the book is important. How many of your teachers have ever explained why they do things a certain way and where it will lead? Her whole approach is centered on teaching Japanese in a way that would make sense to a native Japanese speaker. She uses terms like Nominals, Verbals and Adjectivals because conceptually, to a native Japanese speaker, the English concepts of Noun, Verb and Adjective DO NOT apply exactly. No where else had I seen this distinction explained. What's the point? Well, when you try and apply English grammar concepts wholesale to Japanese you are more likely to get it wrong. They are two distinct languages. Again and again, she makes the point of not getting trapped into "decoding" the language into English. "Decoding" the language is one thing. Knowing the language instinctively is completely different. Jorden gets you on the road to the latter. She tells you why she uses a different romanization scheme. Why you ask? Well, the original schemes tried to map Japanese to English. Jorden's romanization tries to map English to Japanese. She factors in the phonetic profile of the Japanese language, how it actually sounds. Some students do not like the accent marks that are found throughout the book. However, you ABSOLUTELY need to know where the accents fall in a word or phrase, otherwise YOU ARE NOT SPEAKING JAPANESE. Japanese, like other East Asian languages, is a tonal language. If you mess up the accents, at best you will confuse your audience, at worst deeply offend them. Isn't it great that someone took the time to write the accents out? It's up to you to learn them. Also, once you've learned them, you've learned them!!! There is no kana/kanzi in the book itself. That is not a big deal. I taught myself the kana using the Tuttle books. The kanzi will take separate dedicated study no matter what. Do you really want to learn the spoken language and a pictogram/ideograph based writing system simutaneously? Learning kanzi will actually slow you down b

This is a fantastic book. However, it's important that you understand a little about it before you dive right in. There are a lot of reviews on this book, but you will find that many of them are little more than personal testimonies. So, I'll try to give you all the facts and information you should know before you buy or begin using this textbook.The most important thing you should know is that when you buy this book, you ABSOLUTELY MUST BUY THE AUDIO CASSETTES. The interactive cd is even better, but is only available for the first book of the series. Without audio, this book is entirely worthless. In fact, you should treat this book as a SUPPLEMENT TO THE AUDIO CASSETTES, because that's really what it is! Let me explain...This series is designed to make you conversationally adept (if not fluent) in Japanese. Jorden's goal is to get you to ACTUALLY THINK IN JAPANESE, not just memorize vocabulary and grammar rules and attempt to piece together Japanese sentences. To accomplish this, you study (by listening and mimicking) complete conversations, not isolated example sentences. This means that the student develops a better sense of what "sounds right" or is appropriate in certain situations. Also, new sentence forms are drilled repeatedly in a listen-and-respond format until they become automatic. Again, Jorden's objective is to make speaking Japanese so routine that you can focus on WHAT you're saying rather than HOW you're saying it. Therefore, it's important that you get at least the tapes to accompany the book. There are also videos and other resources which are less useful but great if you can acquire them.The second thing you need to know is that this book does NOT teach you to read Japanese. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Jorden avoids the written language to allow the student to focus on developing conversational skill. Instead of Japanese characters, the conversations are written in roomaji (i.e. roman letters that sort of resemble how the Japanese is pronounced). Jorden's choice of romanization is quite strange, which seems to be the biggest complaint about the book. However, if the roomaji cause you problems, then YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG! As I said before, the book is little more than a supplement to the audio. YOU SHOULD NOT LEARN TO SPEAK JAPANESE BY READING, REGARDLESS OF HOW THE JAPANESE IS WRITTEN! Honestly, I don't think I read a single conversation or vocabulary list in the book; I learned all of them by listening and practicing with the tapes. That's the key to using this series - and to becoming fluent in Japanese. In fact, other than reading the grammar explanations and such, you should really try to open the book as little as possible! (Note - "Japanese: The Written Language" is the sister book to this series and DOES cover reading Japanese, but I suggest you gain a little conversational skill before tackling the written language.)Third, this book is not to be taken lightly. This is not a "Hobby Japanese" bo

...then you would realize that this set is the definition of the Japanese language. I am currently attending the Middlebury Summer Language Program (in Japanese, of course) and I just had to look at some of the reviews that people put up for this series. The Middlebury Program is currently using (and has been using) the Jordan method for their first year student's introductions to the Japanese language. As far as I'm concerned, if you have four native speakers of Japanese who are currently getting their doctorates in linguistics, and they all use this book and swear by it when designing how they teach THEIR OWN language to first year learners of Japanese (which I am), then that's a better review than anyone else could possibly write. As for my views of the book, yes, you most definitely need teachers to help you with the grammar sometimes (which makes sense doesn't it?) But I must tell you, I learned German as my first foreign language, and there were no books that even came close to describing the who's what's where's when's and why's of grammar as well as this book does.Yes, I will concede that the characters are a bit humorous in the Core Conversations sometimes, and the vocabulary seems to be lacking in points as well... but despite the miniscule problems that may cause, this book is designed so that you can learn vocabulary on your own. Dr. Jordan has designed this book for the independent thinker... she gives beautiful descriptions in which the basic parts (nominals, verbals, adjectivals) of the Japanese system work, and then you can build from there yourself. As for the people who whine about the amount of grammar in the book: the Japanese language has a lot of grammar. If you don't want grammar, go learn something else.The fact that Jordan uses romanization in the book really shouldn't matter as a buying point. She has a written language supplement (which we are also using at Middlebury) that teaches you all of the words from the spoken language, in a fashion so that you do NOT get overwhelmed when you first attempt to write the incredibly daunting Japanese writing system. Dr. Jordan herself wrote in Chapter 10, pg. 280 "After all, romanization is a foreign system for expediting the acquisition of the spoken language by foreigners..." That's all she treats her romanization as, and that's all it really is: just a tool so that one can better pronounce the Japanese when speaking.Other than that, I really can't think of anything else to say. This book is intense, and only for those who truly want to learn how to use and manipulate the Japanese language. If you're serious about learning, buy it. Otherwise, don't waste your money... go buy a couple tapes that teach you how to say "Hello" and "Good Afternoon".

This series is made of the most rigorous language texts I have seen. No other explanation of Japanese grammar I have ever come across comes close; Jorden and Noda take the approach of explaning everything to the student to eliminate the ambiguity of special cases, and then relentlessly drill them in. Granted, the vocabulary isn't exhaustive, and the examples can be a bit dated in terms of real-word conversations. That isn't the point, though: by learning through idioms, you gain a working knowledge of the language that, when combined with real-world interaction, gives you a solid base to build upon. Instead of stuttering through remembering the meanings of words, and hoping that you reconstruct them into sentences that don't sound funny, certain "blocks" of language become built in, much in the same way that a child would learn to speak a language. At the same time, you aren't using these blocks blindly, because of the incredibly rigorous detail the authors go into. The vocab/modern usage can be easily built on later; this book builds an extremely solid foundation which sets you at ease with Japanese. I feel sorry for anyone trying to learn out of any other books; you simply aren't getting the full picture when it comes to the grammar. After the base has been set by these books, the rest follows easily. These books may require heavy-duty studying, but they are *well* worth the effort.