Letter to my Sensei

[mercedesjin]

Originally Posted by Nagoyankee

I would feel it slightly more natural to put it where the OP put it. But putting it after 日本語を isn't bad at all.

The clear mistake was in writing 見ます with that kanji. It has nothing to do with "seeing", so it isn't written in kanji. That みる means "to try".
_____________

I don't want to raise the general speech level so just listen and forget. This is because we mentioned the phrase "to study by oneself". There is already a word for it, which is to 独学（どくがく）する. If one says 「日本語を独学する」, there's no need for worrying about where to put ひとりで.

Oh, I thought that it was the kanji for "to see" because the way I learned it, it teacher said "to see and try." I'll have to remember that. Thanks!

[mercedesjin]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

Language isn`t just the words - if you`re speaking to your teacher like teenagers would speak to each other... Maybe you should look into studying culture too. They isn`t something that should be forgiven, no matter how odd it may be.

What I've found is that it's pretty difficult to remember culture and language at the same time - at least, when I just started out learning in the classroom. I was taught to be polite to my teacher, but the way my brain works, I think of dictionary form or slang first - and that's the thing that I end up telling my teacher. Later, I would have to correct myself. But it can be hard.

[Khengi]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

You`re contradicting yourself.
It is VERY hard to stay away from teaching you to jump into speaking Japanese without being overwhelming. It`s very hard to have both a book that is simple and teaches you well, but yet which lets you be overwhelmed because it is inevitable. Those traits contradict each other and provide little advantage when slapped together. You`d have something that was overwhelming in it`s depth, but which didn`t try to give you the means to use that knowledge in a quick-route-to-conversation.
A dictionary, perhaps?

I don't mean to be rude, but I'm having a bit of trouble comprehending this post. Not in terms of what you said, but how you said it.

"It is VERY hard to stay away from teaching you to jump into speaking Japanese without being overwhelming."

?

I'm trying to get the gist of what you said and go with it, but some of it is just really confusing me. What I was trying to say is I DON'T like books that try not to overwhelm the reader when it is INEVITABLE, whether it be 'Kanji or counters or whatever'.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by Khengi

I don't mean to be rude, but I'm having a bit of trouble comprehending this post. Not in terms of what you said, but how you said it.



?

I'm trying to get the gist of what you said and go with it, but some of it is just really confusing me. What I was trying to say is I DON'T like books that try not to overwhelm the reader when it is INEVITABLE, whether it be 'Kanji or counters or whatever'.

I think it would probably have made more sense if I`d replied to you sentence by sentence...

You said first that you thought a lot of books were doing a poor job because "they try to teach you how to JUMP right into talking to Japanese people"... And you expressed unhappiness with this because it`s difficult.
But immediately after that, you complain that they don`t teach you how to jump in and talk because they start with formal styles instead of conversational... And then later go on to say that you also don`t like books that are simple and start out without giving you the means to jump in because they are "dumbed down" to allow more time to acquire bit by bit.

To me, that is contradictory. I have absolutely no idea what kind of book you think is good, as you rule out pretty much everything I can think of. Your post left me lost, which is why I replied at all.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by mercedesjin

Oh, I thought that it was the kanji for "to see" because the way I learned it, it teacher said "to see and try." I'll have to remember that. Thanks!

Yeah, sorry I missed that correction. Non-native Japanese learners are always overeager to use kanji they know. For example, I think there's some rule (not a language rule so much as a "style" rule) that you don't write 〜て下さる but rather use only kana. However, you do use 下 when writing 〜を下さる. I could be mistaken on this, but there's someone I know who does a very good blog in Japan and he's often written about stylistic issues when writing Japanese. He pointed this out one time. It think it comes from some style guide like we have the Chicago Manual of Style in the US or *shudder* Strunk and White.

In any case, yeah, when using that grammar point, てみる does not take the kanji. It's the same with 〜ていく and 〜てくる when you're talking about "will begin doing ~" or "has begun doing ~."

Oh, and I know my teachers really hated seeing 出来る for できる. I know you didn't do this in your essay, but I just thought of another time when Japanese learners overuse kanji.

[Khengi]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I think it would probably have made more sense if I`d replied to you sentence by sentence...

You said first that you thought a lot of books were doing a poor job because "they try to teach you how to JUMP right into talking to Japanese people"... And you expressed unhappiness with this because it`s difficult.
But immediately after that, you complain that they don`t teach you how to jump in and talk because they start with formal styles instead of conversational... And then later go on to say that you also don`t like books that are simple and start out without giving you the means to jump in because they are "dumbed down" to allow more time to acquire bit by bit.

To me, that is contradictory. I have absolutely no idea what kind of book you think is good, as you rule out pretty much everything I can think of. Your post left me lost, which is why I replied at all.

Here is what Tae Kim wrote, essentially putting everything I wanted to say into perspective.
Introduction - Tae Kim's Japanese grammar guide

The problem with conventional textbooks is that they often have the following goals.

1. They want readers to be able to use functional and polite Japanese as quickly as possible.
2. They don't want to scare readers away with terrifying Japanese script and Chinese characters.
3. They want to teach you how to say English phrases in Japanese.

Traditionally with romance languages such as Spanish, these goals presented no problems or were nonexistent due to the similarities to English. However, because Japanese is different in just about every way down to the fundamental ways of thinking, these goals create many of the confusing textbooks you see on the market today. They are usually filled with complicated rules and countless number of grammar for specific English phrases. They also contain almost no kanji and so when you finally arrive in Japan, lo and behold, you discover you can't read menus, maps, or essentially anything at all because the book decided you weren't smart enough to memorize Chinese characters.

The root of this problem lies in the fact that these textbooks try to teach you Japanese with English. They want to teach you on the first page how to say, "Hi, my name is Smith," but they don't tell you about all the arbitrary decisions that were made behind your back. They probably decided to use the polite form even though learning the polite form before the dictionary form makes no sense. They also might have decided to include the subject even though it's not necessary and excluded most of the time. In fact, the most common way to say something like "My name is Smith" in Japanese is to say "am Smith". That's because most of the information is understood from the context and is therefore excluded. But does the textbook explain the way things work in Japanese fundamentally? No, because they're too busy trying to push you out the door with "useful" phrases right off the bat. The result is a confusing mess of "use this if you want to say this" type of text and the reader is left with a feeling of confusion about how things actually work.

The solution to this problem is to explain Japanese from a Japanese point of view. Take Japanese and explain how it works and forget about trying to force what you want to say in English into Japanese. To go along with this, it is also important to explain things in an order that makes sense in Japanese. If you need to know [A] in order to understand [b], don't cover [b] first just because you want to teach a certain phrase.

Essentially, what we need is a Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar.

[mercedesjin]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

Yeah, sorry I missed that correction. Non-native Japanese learners are always overeager to use kanji they know. For example, I think there's some rule (not a language rule so much as a "style" rule) that you don't write 〜て下さる but rather use only kana. However, you do use 下 when writing 〜を下さる. I could be mistaken on this, but there's someone I know who does a very good blog in Japan and he's often written about stylistic issues when writing Japanese. He pointed this out one time. It think it comes from some style guide like we have the Chicago Manual of Style in the US or *shudder* Strunk and White.

In any case, yeah, when using that grammar point, てみる does not take the kanji. It's the same with 〜ていく and 〜てくる when you're talking about "will begin doing ~" or "has begun doing ~."

Oh, and I know my teachers really hated seeing 出来る for できる. I know you didn't do this in your essay, but I just thought of another time when Japanese learners overuse kanji.

Oh snap. I actually thought I had to use the kanji for ~teiku and ~tekuru. I don't know it's being overeager though. I actually hate using kanji personally, and my teachers have always been pushing me to use more. It's more like I learned to use the kanji in incorrect places, and was just never corrected. That's why this forum is good, I guess.