Why Your Language Book is Holding Your Japanese Back

Most books for learning are horrible for the long term learner of Japanese.  There are several things to take into account when trying to learn Japanese, or any language for that matter, from fluency level to resources, and even how you learn.  I want to discuss the importance of learning written language and how most American books put out to learn Japanese are counterproductive.

Most people whom want to learn another language, generally, would like to reach a pretty high level of competency in their target language.  There is some debate, usually by lazier learners, about whether you need to learn the writing system at all if you just want to speak the language.

I propose to you if you want any level of competency learning to read and write in Japanese is essential.   Why you may ask, well for the obvious so you can understand things in Japanese.  Once you reach a certain level your English to Japanese dictionary is going to be useless and a hindrance to your Japanese.  You will get to a level where you need to use a monolingual dictionary to really get hold of words you don’t know.  Besides the best way to practice Japanese is to use it as much as possible because you can’t always speak it so reading and writing in Japanese is very important to further your learning.

At this point you are bored and are wanting me to get to the point I am sure.  Well America sucks. Well American books for learning Japanese sucks that is.  I hate to buy a car before I can test drive it for a minute or two, same with books, so I like to go to Borders and Barnes and Noble to look at their language sections, which are pitiful to say the least.  While I was looking through books that promise to take you from beginner to intermediate I noticed something horrible, they used little to no Hirigana or Katakana. It was mostly romaji.  Here are a few pictures I shot of them close to the back where the kana should have been because to be intermediate you need to know kana.

Notice that there is VERY little if any kana on these pages.  I was taken aback at this because if you don’t have kana then how can you be effective with your new language.

The next argument is “It is easier to learn with romaji and we can just use Kana later so its all good”.  My answer is “why?” why is it easier? Is it because you aren’t comfortable with kana? is it that you don’t know kana? (if not visit my kana in 2 weeks post) I mean lets be honest if you don’t ever use hirigana or katakana while learning what makes you think you are going to be fine when you are no longer learning?  Romaji is a crutch for you if you stay using it for too long and should be done away with as quickly as possible.  And even more important moving from kana to Kanji is even more important, but kana will do for now, at least.

One thing I see in class and in talking to others is people spend a lot of time sounding out the words in kana because they don’t know them well enough to read them because they don’t practice enough. Practice is one of the key things I hear people don’t do enough of, especially with Katakana. However, I have seen the reverse true. I recently went to an anime organization meeting and showed the JLPT study paper I had to a person who studies Japanese and knows more than me. They died when they saw hirigana, not good. As a kind of test tell me how easily you can read the following in reverse if not very well you need to get studying if good keep doing what you are doing.

I also want to note another important reason to learn kana.  Sounds will become more natural when speaking.  With romaji we still want to use English sounds and you will become more dependent on those thus increasing any accent you have.  However, once you finally break away from romaji and associate the sounds with kana and not letters with kana you will start to speak a bit more naturally as you hear others speak since you no longer are depending on the English equivalency of the kana.

To sum up how are your books hurting you? Well they aren’t using kana or much kanji to teach you they are using romaji.  This hurts because if you go through a whole book without learning either when you go to a website from japan guess what.  You aren’t going to know anything.  However, if you do know kana and some kanji when you go to Japanese  sites you are going to understand some of it.  Let me tell you this is VERY motivating.  I randomly went to docomo website and could make out parts of the site to be able to register.  It allowed me to really feel that I have been learning Japanese and not all my learning was in vain. By having the book only use kana when doing Japanese it forces you to use kana whether you like it or not.

So what is the solution.  Investigate books.  Take a look at the bok you are about to buy or are looking at buying.  How much kana does it have it? none, put it back.  Some keep it in hand but keep looking.  A lot, buy it.  The more you use kana the more comfortable it will be to use and the more you can do with it.  I can’t really look at to many books since my book store selection sucks, but the best bok I have seen so far is the Genki series.  While it has flaws it does meet the converstion from romaji to kana as the primary Japanese communication, and as a note the book is from Japan.

The most ideal book would be as the book teaches you something be it kana or kanji it no longer uses the crutch but uses what it already taught you.  So after it shows you how to do hirigana.  No more romaji where hirigana is.  Same with Katakana and Kanji.  I wish the genki books would do it with kanji too as I rely on the furigana way to much and use it as a crutch, though I am working on not doing so.

So what do you think?

Related Posts:

• Regrouping and Focusing on Attainable Things
• 10 Steps to Start Learning Japanese
• Make Your Strengths Your Weakness
• Do You Know Your Place?
• Why my JLPT Fail was Still a Win

Tagged as: motivational, Problems