Discount from reusing original course to reboot (long dormant) language? (Japanese)

[tangleweeds]

Back in the '90's the Japanese department I studied under for three years used Eleanor Harz Jorden's Japanese:The Spoken Language. It wasn't a course I'd particularly recommend; at the time it totally stressed me out, though my grades were fine. In the end it left me functionally illiterate, with a firm belief that romaji are the work of the devil. So I've chosen Minna no Nihongo as first textbook, so I can avoid seeing English or Romaji unless I go looking for them. Everything is fine there.

However, JSL has inexpensive textbooks, the audio files are officially freely available online, and man, I seriously drilled myself on that stuff, at night as I lay in bed with insomnia, in the morning with my coffee... After all that drilling, I suspect I could reawaken memories at a pretty good discount. I don't want to re-learn the course in any deep way, but it seems like these old memory traces should be good for leveraging something somehow.

But... romaji! Have they already done all the damage to me that they can so it's no harm revisiting them? Or should I obey my first instincts and avoid them like the plague?

Has anyone had the opportunity to revisit the first textbook they studied a language with? Is it worthwhile to revisit a pre-travelled path?

[reineke]

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[Iversen]

If you hated the learning system in question the first time you used it, then chances are that you also will hate it the second - unless the ONLY reason was that it was too difficult for you the first time. In that case it may actually be within reach the second time, and you will hate it slightly less. But if you didn't like its methodology or structure or the content of its texts then it is unlikely that you will like it the second time.

When I decided to relearn my languages in 2006 after a 25 your long pause, I didn't immediately run out and buy new textbooks and dictionaries and grammars - I used the ones I had already, It made it much easier to get back into the groove again, and frankly the modern textbooks aen't necessarily better then the old ones. As for dictionairies they were physically smaller and often written with a smaller font, but this also meant they they were easier to handle. Since then I have bought new dictionaries, but I still have the old ones around and still use them. The grammars from the 60s or 70s were maybe more focused on literary language than new ones, but frankly most new ones still primarily describe the written standard. And the whole stir around the theories of Chomsky have had little impact on language pedagogics. Textbooks have generally become visually prettier, but also bigger and more cumbersome, and their content has generally become dumbed down.

So there is no reason to throw out old books just because of their age, but you have to be aware of their limitations. They can't possibly contain the vocabulary we use to describe the modern technology around us, their expression may be outdated and in some cases there have been ortography reforms since they were written. For instance I have a handy Greek-German Langenscheidt dictionary that still uses the three old accents and the two aspirations- but it is easy to ignore this and just see an accent, never mind which one (it had been worse to go from one accent to three!). And my old Academy Romanian dictionary uses â in a lot of cases where Modern Romanian has î. But it is still the only one among my Romanian dictionaries that bothers to indicate which verbs use an infix and which don't.

As for the textbooks I still prefer my old blue Teach Yourselfs which were much slimmer than later versions, but seem to contain more infromation - and certainly present it in a more orderly way. And I have reread my Greek Mystakidis, my "Latinsk læsebog" by Mikkelsen and other old acquisitions - and the reuse discount was clearly there.

[PolyglotMaya]

Ultimately, you have to make your own decision, but I would strongly recommend staying away from your old materials and working with something new.

First of all, romaji are no good. Yes, it's better to be functionally illiterate than to know nothing of a language at all; but if your goal with Japanese is even something as low as getting to an intermediate level, then being functionally illiterate is no good. Even if you just learn hiragana and never touch kanji, you will be ahead compared to if you had only learned romaji. At least with hiragana, you can read furigana and things written for children.

But the much bigger issue, IMHO, is that you found the old program stressful. I firmly believe that we can't get very far in any language if we're not either having fun or, at the very least, have some reason to be interested.

As far as retrieving old information... from what I've learned (in psychology courses) it seems like our memories don't just disappear; they gradually fade over time. I suspect that whatever you learned in your old Japanese course is still in your brain somewhere, and it will come out even if you use a slightly different course.

To make a long story short, I just don't think that the stress/discomfort caused by this course is worth the extra ~5* words that you might remember sooner if you use it instead of another course. No matter what you use, the road to fluency will be long; you might as well make the ride as enjoyable as possible.


*冗談ですよ...

[smallwhite]

Reusing the same textbook works well for me, too. It's feels like EVERYTHING I used to own comes back, or MORE than everything even, as this second time round I can often get even more out of the book.

Can you maybe just re-study the dialogues and not re-do the exercises, or something like that, to avoid the problems you used to have?

And since Romaji sounds like a big problem for you, can you try to overcome that problem instead? That would also open you up to more possible textbooks. I actually prefer Romaji to Kana, so maybe there's something you're missing about Romaji? (And me about Kana).

[chill]

Hi Tangleweeds,

When you say that you were harmed by romaji, do you mean it terms of pronunciation?

[tangleweeds]

When you say that you were harmed by romaji, do you mean it terms of pronunciation?

Oops that's just my sense of humor failing to work. Apologies.

My problem with romaji is that when a textbook has romaji and kana, my eyes/brain bounce off the less familiar kana, but it only takes the tiniest glimpse of the romaji and I've read them, because I'm was so practiced at reading romaji. This makes it super-hard to get a clean attempt at reading kana if there's romaji anywhere nearby. Needing to dodge around with an index card to obscure the romaji made me cranky about them, I think. But that shows you have a point, smallwhite -- I do find them easier to read.

The other day at the university bookstore I saw they were still using JSL. A quick flip through it made me nostalgic, then later that evening I discovered the audio legally available at Ohio State. I don't think I feel bad about the course materials, so much that I was stressed out by the strict immersion and rapid fire drills. Speaking during class is a naturally stressful situation of being observed and evaluated to begin with. and we were supposed to know our drills, and I did, dangit, right until I opened my mouth, my mind went blank, and something random came out. My mind goes blank in any sort of stressful social interaction, so it's not surprising, but I think it was a bad intersection of personality and language class format.

Reusing the same textbook works well for me, too. It's feels like EVERYTHING I used to own comes back, or MORE than everything even, as this second time round I can often get even more out of the book.

This is exactly what I felt I might be primed for. It helped to use my old textbooks to review math, for example.

[Rotasu]

In the end it left me functionally illiterate, with a firm belief that romaji are the work of the devil. So I've chosen Minna no Nihongo as first textbook, so I can avoid seeing English or Romaji unless I go looking for them. Everything is fine there.

So you think. Until you get to lesson 4+ of MNN and realize your eyes keep going to those pesty furigana and you stopped even seeing the Kanjis Dx Though this can be fix by just marking over the furigana if you already seen it before. I bought MNN for the same reason as you but the examples sentences and the very short dialogues left much to be desired. I did like how fast the listening questions were since it was almost native speed. I think to really learn anything with MNN you have to do every exercise and really study the grammar book. Good luck.

Now to answer your question.
My first textbook for Japanese was Japanese Demystified and that thing had romaji under everything! Even on the quizzes and test. Romaji. Romaji. Romaji. I tried marking them out but god they were just so much of them that I dropped the book altogether and went for MNN. The last time I had my language learning break, to get myself back in the groove, I opened up MNN and started reviewing. Didnt once think about taking a glance at Japanese Demystified. Yes, once you have learned the kana, never look at romaji again. Also Yes, I do think it worthwhile to revisit old textbook, as long as their actually good :3

[tangleweeds]

In the end it left me functionally illiterate, with a firm belief that romaji are the work of the devil. So I've chosen Minna no Nihongo as first textbook, so I can avoid seeing English or Romaji unless I go looking for them. Everything is fine there.

So you think. Until you get to lesson 4+ of MNN and realize your eyes keep going to those pesty furigana and you stopped even seeing the Kanjis Dx

So the same problem there, just relocated from the romaji to the furigana. But at least once I'm able to read hiragana that automatically, I will be a good step ahead of where I am now.

I bought MNN for the same reason as you but the examples sentences and the very short dialogues left much to be desired. I did like how fast the listening questions were since it was almost native speed. I think to really learn anything with MNN you have to do every exercise and really study the grammar book. Good luck.

What course (or other) material might you recommend for someone wanting to break free of romaji?

[smallwhite]

My problem with romaji is that when a textbook has romaji and kana, my eyes/brain bounce off the less familiar kana, but it only takes the tiniest glimpse of the romaji and I've read them, because I'm was so practiced at reading romaji. This makes it super-hard to get a clean attempt at reading kana if there's romaji anywhere nearby.
... I do find them easier to read.

You and I both see Romaji in textbooks, but you hate them and I love them. Here's what I think about them:

I'm exactly like you. My eyes also bounce off the Kana, onto the Romaji, and instantaneously I've read them. Exactly like you. Yet I think that's great, because that lets me speed through textbooks in the shortest time possible, and then proceed to native material. Textbooks are just for introducing me to a language; a crutch, a bridge, for bootstrapping. I'm only going to be reading textbooks for 5 months of my life, and then for the remaining 50 years I'll be using or enjoying native material. Who cares how I sped through those 5 months. I just know that 5 months of textbooks is better than 10 months. So I speed. Or cheat. It's just another form of cheating. True, reading the Romaji in the textbook doesn't help me read Kana in books, but to read Kana in books better I simply have to go read books.

I've probably exaggerated, but you get the idea