Japanese: The Spoken Language (Part 1)

Rating:
Summary: If you know anything about languages...
Review: ...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".

Rating:
Summary: Difficult book.. there are better ones out there
Review: I studied japanese for 1 year before going to college and ending up with this book. I found it extremely frustrating. I can't figure out why the author wrote the book in romaji as opposed to japanese. There is good information in the book about sentence pattern and structure but I spent a majority of my time translating all the of the romaji sentences into hiragana so that I could actually read them. I feel it's much more beneficial for students to flat out learn hiragana/katakana/kanji at the beginning than trying to go through romaji. Several of the advanced students I know who started out with the "Jordan" method still cling far more to the romaji than is necessary and it is a hinderance to their learning. I recommend the "Nakama" textbook series or "Japanese for Everyone" textbook as much better alternatives to this book.

Rating:
Summary: A mistunderstood book that makes a good intro to Japanese
Review: Japanese: The Spoken Language is an introductory spoken Japanese text which is highly misunderstood by many learners. Jorden's approach to teaching Japanese is a highly specialized (some say obsolete) method which requires diligence and above all understanding her method (teachers who understand the method are even better).

To respond to some of the specific criticisms of the book in other reviews:

The use of romaji should not pose a problem. As Jorden says in the introduction, the romaji only serve to remind you of what you have heard, "and heard many, many times." It is true that romaji do not help you pronounce Japanese, but neither do kana -- the only way to truly know how to pronounce a Japanese word or sentence is to listen to a native speaker say it and then repeat after the native speaker. The romaji only serve as a reference point to discuss the grammar in the book, it is *not* intended to teach you Japanese pronunciation. You are not supposed to learn the Japanese from the romaji transcriptions in the textbook.

The emphasis on memorization of core conversations is another feature of Jorden's method. Jorden's method is that you should first memorize how to say something (know what the English translation of what you are saying is), and then look at the grammar notes to know how to form sentences of that type. This is because when you are forming a sentence in spoken Japanese, you should not be thinking of the grammar rules that form what you are saying, rather the grammatical patterns should be internalized so that you can think about what you are saying rather than how to say it. When native speakers speak Japanese they do not think about grammar rules.

Another feature is highly repetitive drills. This, again, is the emphasis on internalizing the grammar and making it automatic rather than relying on rules to form sentences.

Finally, it works on the idea that a good oral foundation is necessary to learn to read. This is why the book does not contain any characters. If you want to learn to read Japanese, that requires a different approach. Simply seeing the vocabulary items and core conversations written out in Japanese characters does not go a long way towards helping you read -- for that you need a specialized reading text like Japanese: The Written Language, Basic Kanji Book, or Japanese: A Manual of Reading and Writing.

To close this section of the review, the idea that romaji use will permanently cripple your Japanese is unfounded. I began with Japanese: The Spoken Language, and I have progressed just fine to an upper intermediate level of reading (about 1600 kanji at this point). This happened despite the fact that I didn't even learn kana until the second semester of my Japanese study.

There are some problems with this series, though:
1. Too much emphasis on keigo and business Japanese. This is particularly bad in volume 3, but even in volume 1 you find that the polite language is introduced before plain form. Most students will find that their primary use of Japanese is either talking to foreign students at their own university, or talking to a host family and other college students if they study abroad in Japan. Neither of these situations are conducive to super-polite Japanese.

2. It can get a bit boring with the endless repetitive drills. This probably is the best way to learn fluent, automatic Japanese, but it's not very interesting.

3. The grammar explanations can be a bit dense -- they're written at a high linguistic level and Jorden goes out of her way to avoid relating things to closely to English grammar (i.e. calling something a "noun" or a "verb").

Despite this I think that volume 1 is a good introductory text and if you really follow Jorden's method carefully you will be able to speak fairly good basic Japanese.

(One final note -- the idea that Jorden "created" her own romanization method is not true. While this is not the common Hepburn romanization system, it was not created by Jorden. It actually predates the Hepburn system and it is used in Japan at least as often as the Hepburn. Also, the details of the romanization system should not matter since you're only supposed to use the romaji for reference, not for learning.)

Rating:
Summary: A True Masterpiece
Review: JSL is without a doubt the best Japanese language textbook on the market; it's most likely the best language textbook ever written. I encourage students to use the book in conjunction with the audio tapes, CD, and partner textbook, Japanese: the Written Language.

Rating:
Summary: A different perspective
Review: Sorry if this is repeated somehwere in the many reviews, but I didn't feel like reading *all* of them.

One thing I noticed while reading reviews of this series (not just part 1), whether they be at amazon or bn, or wherever, is the lack of real incite into Jordan's method. People who have "studied" japanese before getting to Jordan's books are, 90% of the time, the people who hate it. Then, most of the people who love the books, are those who haven't studied any other method before. Those anti-Jordan folk claim that the pro-Jordan folk only like it because they haven't been exposed to the "real thing" (whatever that is). I believe they have it backwards.

I am from a background where I studied under "traditional" romaji, terminology etc... for 2 years, and then moved on to Jordan's books at higher level college courses. At first, I was like the rest of the anti-Jordans. Then, as I studied her books more and more, I began to see where she was coming from on many issues. Why did I begin to like the book when others maintained their hatred? Well, to be frank, they are narrow-minded individuals who look at one AND ONLY ONE side of the story. They dislike the fact that "chi" is written as "ti" by Jordan. Well, you want to know what? This DOES NOT MATTER for several reasons:

1) If you are so slow that you can't adapt your Japanese learning to know what "ti" sounds like after 5 minutes of practice, why are you studying a difficult language like Japanese?

2) If you think that "chi" is what it ACTUALLY sounds like in Japanese, well, you really don't know the spoken language; if you pronounce the japanese "ti", "chi", ‚¿, (or whatever), as an english "chi", you're going to sound like a stupid foreigner with an English accent.

Before I rant some more, let me give a few anecdotes from my first class that used Jordan's text book. There were 8 of us. 5 had never studied japanese before, one girl studied for 2 years, one girl studied for 6 (SIX!) years, and I had studied for two. All of us "veterans" had used different books. Now, I'm not talking about a girls with IQs of 10. These other two girls were smart, receptive, and quick. At first, I was intimidated by one having 6 years of formal Japanese education under her belt. How wrong I was. It was clear that she was somewhat bored with the technical aspect of things, but I soon found out how useless her previous education was. While in class with our native Japanese drill instructor, this student of 6 years had a pronounciation similar to the true beginner students. She confused ga, wa, and o time after time again. She never quite got the difference between "sirimasen" and "wakarimasen", etc... All the while, she hid behind the fact that our textbook was terrible, and that "*she* knew the written language". Well, as soon as we started learning katakana, the excuse turned into, "well, *I* know Kanji and hiragana". Well, I gave her some Kanji and innocently asked if she could translate them. She knew the meanings of a few simple ones, but could only give me one reading, AT BEST!

One year later, she has been studying for 5 more years than me, but I am a better speaker, writer, and reader.

I know this has been somewhat long and ranting. I expect nobody will rate this as being helpful. However, if you've managed to read this entire thing, then I hope you come away with one thing: Keep an open mind while reading this. It's slightly different than you may be used to, but I believe it isn't too different in the areas that count. However, if you're one of those people who find change absolutely *horrid*, then don't buy the book, you won't hurt anybody's feelings. For everyone else who feels that the difference between "verb", "verbal" and "tyotto", "chotto", aren't the difference between life and death, then buy the book and the audio part. You won't be sorry.