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So, I bought the lifetime membership a month back and am finally free enough to start studying on TextFugu.
I am a full time undergraduate student at a university in UK. I have attended one year classes in Japanese, the previous year. I wanted to continue to Level 2, but since there were not enough students, they decided to cancel it. Still, even being a beginner’s first year class, we went through “Japanese for Busy People Vol. 1″ , romanized and it was not enough for me.
In the summer between my academic years, I studied by myself and did learn Kana properly. I did go through RTK once or twice, but haven’t had that enthusiasm at the moment.
My reason for learning Japanese is probably one of the most common. I like Japanese media such as anime, manga, light novels, dorama etc and would like to be independent of the English translation. Though, I focus more on the reading/writing part more than the listening/speaking.
I hope to get along with all of you.
Hmmm… if you’ve already went through the whole of JFBP I (albeit in romaji), I’m not sure buying TextFugu was really the best thing to do – you probably know a lot of the stuff on here already, and the addition of new content is going at a snail’s pace. That’s not to say that TextFugu is bad (I loved it when I started), just that a monthly subscription probably would have been a better bet, to see if it’s worth buying into completely. Sorry to be a downer, but that’s just speaking from my experience :P
But *anyway*…
What uni do you go to? I’m at Edinburgh and there’re some classes run by the Japanese Society that I go to; couldn’t get in to the main Japanese 1 course due to timetable clashes.
Good luck and have fun anyway, whatever you decide to do :DHeh, I kind of knew that TextFugu is still not something that will probably help at the time being. But my grammar and Kanji are not good and reading the first season before buying, I liked TF’s approach to learning Kanji by its radicals. I know, it is still not much as from what I have heard from the reviews, but I want to give it a chance (have the lifetime account, so might as well have patience :P). This is not the only way I am studying, but I would like this as a supplement as well. Besides that, I like learning online, more than reading from books (even though I have lots of them, at the moment).
Anonymousこんにちわこんにちは
Welcome to Textfugu!
I did the kana version of Japanese for Busy People myself, so I don’t know exactly how the romaji version handles things, but if you got through a whole textbook without learning about the particle は, then… Well let’s just say Textfugu is waiting. =P
My version’s got a list of “useful daily expressions” on page xvi, before you even start the lessons, and item number two is こんにちは.
Well, I think I mislead people by what I said.
We had only done like 15 chapters or so. But thanks for the correction. Now, I won’t make a fool of myself. :P
@joel: Well, if you go through the ROMANISED version of a textbook, how are you supposed to know that “wa” is written as “ha” in hiragana, eh? :P
@tyson123g: Yeah, that’s perfectly fine, I was just being a bit pessimistic about it haha. If you catch up with TextFugu though and need something to read while waiting for the next update, I’d suggest just going on to JFBP II; I thought it was pretty good anyway. I liked JFBP III as well, though I didn’t find learning keigo (formal language) to be all that useful; I felt that was a big chunk of the book wasted, space that could have been used for something else.
@joel: Well, if you go through the ROMANISED version of a textbook, how are you supposed to know that “wa” is written as “ha” in hiragana, eh? :P
「Romanised」じゃない。「ローマ字」です。
Anyway, my point was that since I’ve never looked at the romaji version of Japanese for Busy People, I don’t know when they start introducing kana. If they never do, mind you, then what on earth did you spent fifteen chapters learning?
As for keigo, I’ve gotten the strong impression that the book is somewhat geared towards Japanese-learners who are already working in Japan, and you’ll be quite likely to need keigo in a Japanese workplace. I’m on volume three myself, but I’ve gotten a little stalled…
@Joel : To be honest, when I read JFBP romanized version, I do feel it focuses more on business aspect and speaking part, instead of reading.
I knew that there are some places where we write は for わ. But only because, I knew it from watching some shows and I tried clarifying some doubts regarding it (Note: My teacher didn’t mention it). I still don’t know where it is used and where not and as I said before, writing/reading is not actually the focus of the romanized version.
But as I said in the first post, I want to learn to read, so hopefully TF will help in something atleast.
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This reply was modified 12 years ago by
tyson123g.
Rather than “は is sometimes written instead of わ”, it’s “は is sometimes pronounced ‘wa’” – specifically, when it’s acting as a particle in a sentence. The particle は (pronounced ‘wa’) is the topic particle – it indicates what a sentence is about. It also appears in conjunctions too (like それでは, meaning “well then…”) but that’s still the same particle playing some part lost in etymological history.
More info: http://www.textfugu.com/season-2/particle-ha/why/
@joel: As far as I know, they don’t introduce kana at all. The romanised version is just the kana book but written *all* in romaji. Having a whole textbook in romaji shouldn’t even be an option (learning kana isn’t exactly hard), but obviously they’ll make more money that way, unfortunately.
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This reply was modified 12 years ago by
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