What are some good books to learn from?

[Kamisama]

I'm wondering what some good japanese language books are.
There are many out there but i can't determine which should be used and which ones actually pronounce the words correctly.

I find it odd when a word says (Kyōto) with a line over it. Wouldn't that be Or even dōmo.

A book that includes kanji for words also would be good.
And does anyone know the best english-japanese dictionary out there?
I have a websters but it doesn't seem to up to date.

[jt_]

Here are a few books that I swore by when I was just beginning my study of the language:

The basic and intermediate grammar dictionaries by Makino and Tsutsui:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4789004546/104-8651127-0659931?v=glance
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4789007758/ref=cm_custrec_gl_acc/104-8651127-0659931?v=glance&s=books

Don't be fooled by the "basic" in the title of the first one. The analysis of the grammar is very detailed, with excellent example sentences, and I think even advanced students of the language could learn a lot from both of them.

Kodansha's Furigana J-E/E-J Dictionary:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4770024800/ref=pd_sim_books_2/104-8651127-0659931?v=glance&s=books

This is a good basic dictionary for a beginning student, I think. It gives you the words in context with good example sentences, in authentic Japanese script (with furigana readings for all kanji, hence the title), which is very helpful. It's a good dictionary to carry you over until you build up the reading skills necessary to work with a 国語辞典 (Japanese-Japanese dictionary).

For learning kanji, I'd recommend finding a book that provides (again) lots of reading examples in context, like the "Kanji in Context" books put together by the Inter-University Center for Japanese or the Bonjinsha "Basic Kanji" books. (The latter I personally have never used, but have heard good things about): http://members.tripod.com/~nurikabe/kanji.html

If you're looking for more of an actual traditional textbook (as opposed to more reference-type works above) then I'm not sure what to recommend. The first textbook I ever used was Yookoso!, which I don't think I could recommend with any confidence, because it always seemed lacking to me in terms of detailed grammar explanations and authentic conversational examples. There are new(er) textbooks like Genki and Nakama that I've heard good things about, but I've personally never used them -- maybe someone else here who has could offer some impressions?

I may take a lot of heat for saying this, but I still find Jorden's Japanese: The Spoken Language to be a well-structured textbook with excellent grammar explanations (though perhaps a bit difficult to wade through if linguistics isn't your thing) and a good variety of drills and example conversations.

I know that a lot of people think Jorden is TEH EVIL for using romaji (and bizarre, non-standard "roomazi" at that!) but I've always believed that as long as you supplement JSL with materials to learn the written language, it's not really an issue. Some people make it sound like even taking one look at romaji will stunt your Japanese pronunciation terribly forever and ever, but really, out of all the textbooks I've seen, Jorden's is the only one that covers Japanese intonation and pitch accent in depth, and careful study of these (if used in conjunction with the audio materials so you actually can hear the native models before trying to reproduce the accent yourself) will go a long way towards making your Japanese sound natural to native speakers.

Also on the topic of pronunciation, I found a rather nice text called 日本語の発音教室 published by Kuroshio Shuppan, but it's entirely in Japanese so I could only recommend it to high-intermediate/advanced learners.

Anyway, I'm not sure that this is a direct answer to your question, but hopefully you'll find a helpful book or two in here.

[puKKa]

If you want a good book to do Kanji-lookup in I strongly recommend:

The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, ISBN 4-7700-2855-5



Hmm.. about the pancakes, since I've only been to USA one time (and ate the fattest hamburger in my life) and the milk in USA can't beat "Arla L?ttmj?lk" by any chance so I think the pancakes you eat are different from our elite "pannkakor" :blush: :blush:

[Kamisama]

I've read about books being scrutinized for their use of romaji. Do you know if there are any certain books out there that try to teach you sentence structure and grammar in kana/gana/kanji but using english language to teach the lesson while perhaps covering the kanji in the sentence?

[jt_]

I've read about books being scrutinized for their use of romaji. Do you know if there are any certain books out there that try to teach you sentence structure and grammar in kana/gana/kanji but using english language to teach the lesson while perhaps covering the kanji in the sentence?
Yes, there's a whole bunch of them. Three of the textbooks I named above (Yookoso, Genki, and Nakama) would fit your description, I imagine, and I know there are others as well (Japanese for Busy People is another one I've heard of being used in college classes). Genki has a webpage (http://www.genki-online.com) where you can see some sample pages -- take a look and see if it's what you're looking for. Again, the only one of these that I've personally used is Yookoso, and I can't say I'd recommend it. Maybe the others offer better analysis of sentence structure, but I can't say. Then again, of course any of the above textbooks would be better than nothing, and if you need more detailed explanations of grammar you can always check out those two grammar reference dictionaries I mentioned above, which are excellent.

I guess what I was trying to say about Japanese: The Spoken Language is that I think that it's unfairly demonized solely because it uses romaji. I used the textbook, and I welcomed the detailed explanations of sentence structure and intonation/accent and such, and the use of romaji didn't really bother me because I was already teaching myself to read Japanese. I really don't agree with using romaji to teach Japanese, but I think it's silly to completely dismiss an otherwise excellent textbook for that one flaw. It's just a pet peeve of mine, I guess.

As for what textbook would best suit you, the best thing to do is probably to take a look at them for yourself and see what you think.

[Scrivener]

Fantt recommended this one:
http://www.jref.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12355

[Vegetasama]

If you are just looking for phrases then I've had luck with things like berlitz and what not. There is also the rosetta stone program (rosettastone.com). I do not have this program but i have demo'ed it online and it seems pretty good (although this is good for learning a language i suppose)

[ArdenD]

I've been fairly happy with the "Japanese for Busy People" series (books are available in Romaji AND Kana only versions)

Japanese for Busy People 1 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4770018827/qid=1097644466/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-0727441-9561555?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)
Japanese for Busy People 1 - Kana Version (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4770019874/qid=1097644466/sr=8-6/ref=pd_csp_6/104-0727441-9561555?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

Good systematic approach to teaching the structure, and begins with the most important parts of Japanese structure, at least my teacher says so... lol

[Stutz]

Personally I like the Genki series myself. The book and tapes work well together and they give you a good amount of pratice drills that will allow you to use the speach and get a hang on how to use each part of the grammar. It even has cutural notes to explain why certain parts of speech are used for those that have trouble understanding the difference such as the difference between iku and kuru and when to use them.

The only downside with Genki is for the full version of the CDs, it's 18,000 yen which isn't cheap even in US dollars. I use the tapes my university has been approved to use and only paid $11 for the first 7 lessons, but I know not everyone has that advantage.

[puKKa]

Hmm.. I "have" a book I "got" this summer that was really great(at least the first pages ^^) BUT I can't get the name of it since I did'nt have any money at that time so I was going to get it as a birthday present this year and its 25th november so my mom has it somewhere safe so I can't get it untill then :O

I'll tell you november 25th.. If I remember ^^

[Fantt]

:D :D :p

That was really useful pukka. :balloon:

[puKKa]

ni-ni-ni-ni

puKKa no shinobi ^^ :blush:

[blade_bltz]

I've always used Nakama and a Japanese text "toppiku ni yoru nihongo sougou enshuu." I started off learning kanji with the Basic Kanji books vol 1 and 2, then just worked out of a dictionary.

[Fantt]

I've always used Nakama and a Japanese text "toppiku ni yoru nihongo sougou enshuu." I started off learning kanji with the Basic Kanji books vol 1 and 2, then just worked out of a dictionary.

How long have you been studying, and to what degree are you comfortable with reading/speaking/listening to Japanese?

[BamaFan2989]

Let's say I know all the Hiragana and some Katakana....what will help me with grammar and stuff?

[jt_]

Let's say I know all the Hiragana and some Katakana....what will help me with grammar and stuff?
Any good college textbook should give you a good introduction to basic grammar and sentence structure. There are plenty of recommendations above in this thread, like Genki, Nakama, Japanese for Busy People, Yookoso, Japanese: The Spoken Language, etc. etc. Genki seems to be popular with a lot of people these days -- I can't comment on it since I've never used it, but basically any decent textbook is better than nothing. See which of the books you can find, take a look at them, and choose one that you like.

The grammar dictionaries that I linked to in my post above are also very good, but these are reference books, not textbooks, so they're not really something you can just read through from start to finish (well, you can, but they're not designed for that, so it might be a bit overwhelming). I'd highly recommend them once you pick up a little more experience, though.

I'm glad to see that you're looking into getting a textbook, though. Just knowing kana without having any idea of how Japanese sentence structure works won't get you very far, to say the least.

[BamaFan2989]

Hey, I am thinking of getting this book: Japanese Step by Step : An Innovative Approach to Speaking and Reading Japanese
by Gene Nishi

It was put on here somewhere, I forget where though. I think it will be good with "Sentence Structure" and "Grammar" thanks guys!