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I’ve known about this website since last year and have kept an eye on it ever since. It’s a site to learn Korean and reminds me alot of TextFugu. The lessons are in the style of TextFugu. Even the layout was similar to the old TextFugu one. The author of the site developed a cool app for learning Hangul. Once you’ve learnt Hangul you can move on to the free lessons.
The author has similar teaching style to Koichi and knows what a complete beginner should be learning, what’s important and what isn’t, and best of all has the experience needed to get you to learn Korean asap. There isn’t as much content as TextFugu or a community as big, but it will keep on growing.
I highly recommend checking it out if you intend to learn Korean one day or know someone that wants to learn it.
I don’t really want to learn Korean, but if I did, I’m sure I use it :) Looks a nice site, in a similar vein to TextFugu (pretty sure TF used to use a pretty similar… website theme, or whatever they’re called, possibly even the same one). I like that it’s all free too. I was actually a bit curious about maybe learning Korean someday, but I can’t really face the language any more – had a really bad Korean-American flat mate last semester and recently had troubles with a girl that had a thing for Korea XD Sounds stupid, I know, but it would just remind me of both incidents too much… And anyway, I have Japanese to focus on right now :D It’s the only language I really want to learn at the moment.
Maybe one day, maybe after I become fluent in Japanese.
Too bad I can see them turning this into a business, making the site into a membership unless it becomes the Tae Kim of Korean. Lol wait, Tae Kim is Korean, wtf?
Thanks for pointing this out. Korean is the language I want to learn once my Japanese is strong enough that I won’t completely confuse myself. Some vocab is just similar enough to be frustrating, especially Chinese loanwords.
@ Mister
That’s a shame you’ve had a couple of bad experiences that has put you off wanting to learn Korean. I’d say Korean and Chinese are still worth learning after you’ve finished learning Japanese. If you do change your mind in the future do take a look at learn hangul :)@ missing
Yes, I believe Tae Kim is Korean. I hope someone makes a Mandarin or Cantonese site too in the style of TextFugu.@ Kas
You’re welcome. Spread the word :)TextFugu is definitely the best method for self studying students. Before I discovered TextFugu, I went on a rampage on Amazon UK and bought loads of books. I’ve barely looked at them since joining TextFugu but might properly use them one day in the future. If anyone’s interested, here’s a pic of all the Japanese books I own.
LOL WHAT.
The only gem within that whole book collection of yours is Japanese Sentence Patters for Effective Communication. I highly suggest you use it, no I command you to use it. I can vouch for its practicality, own a copy myself and probably one of my best purchases towards learning Japanese. Maybe now that you are learning with Textfugu and got some sort of start, you should take a look at that book. Probably if you took a look at it any of those books right away expecting to learn Japanese, it is most likely not gonna help you.
I here Dictionary of Japanese Particles is a good book but I haven’t taken a look at it myself.
Oh damn, and I saw that book (Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication) at the bookstore near my house WAY back when I first began trying to learn Japanese. They had only one left and I kinda paged through it a bit, but didn’t buy it. A few days later I decided to buy it, but it was gone and I never saw it restocked again.
And then the bookstore got closed down… :(
@ missing
Lol, yeah thank god I discovered TextFugu or I probably might have got burned out trying to use one of those books. I honestly had no idea which books were good back when I bought them all and I was just relying on Amazon reviews for all of them. That will teach me to spend money without doing research first. I’ve had a quick look through some of the books and a few are littered with romaji.I will start using Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication based on your recommendation. A Dictionary of Japanese Particles has got good reviews so I will also look through that.
Are there any other books you’d recommend using to supplement TextFugu?
@ Gigatron
It seems Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication has gone out of print as you can’t buy it new anymore and people are selling it for inflated prices on Amazon marketplace.@kanjiman8: Where did you buy JSPFEC (much easier when abbreviated :P) and how much for? Amazon are selling it for £161.91 new and £92.71 used :S I have an Amazon voucher and was planning to spend it on that book, but now… How much did all those books cost you in total? :D Must have been a fair amount of money, I’ll bet.
Oh, and it seems someone is selling copies on eBay for £104.56 lolwut
It’s a shame there aren’t even any pdf copies floating about the interwebs… I mean, *I* would never download one but…
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This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by
MisterM2402 [Michael].
Amazon.ca has JSPEC ($20), and seem to be willing to ship internationally. Over a month to ship, so I don’t know if they might cancel in the future due to realising they have no stock or something.
You can follow the thread here and see if anything crops up in your area.
@kanjiman, missing
I actually found Japanese Demystified to be a pretty good book. It was the first thing I used after learning hiragana and I learned a lot from it. Granted I went through it with my Japanese neighbor. The only downside I really saw was the use of romaji throughout. Just about everything from Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication is in there with more examples and exercises and better explanations imo. Just go through the book and cross out all the romaji with a marker first and it’s a decent resource.@MisterM2402: Seems that only private merchants are selling it on Amazon for inflated prices for the time being; I bought mine a few months ago on Amazon for around 20 USD. I recommend grabbing it on Booksamillion right now (they do international orders outside of US and Canada too), where it’s selling for 15 USD (not including shipping).
I like abbreviating it as JSPEC, just cuz.
Btw, the only downside of Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication is that it uses romaji and kanji, but it’s not really that huge of a reason to CRY LIKE A PANSY and throw it away.
@ mister
I bought JSPFEC just over a year ago for £10.75 on Amazon UK. Back then the book had no stock and price issues. I spent almost £130 on all my books. Elementary Japanese and the teacher guide alone, cost just over £50.@ kyle
That’s not a bad technique to block out the romaji. Might just try that with Japanese Demystified.@ missing
Not saying that any book with romaji should be avoided like the plague but I can see how it could potentially distract someone from concentrating on kana and kanji. The books I were refering to about being littered with romaji were Japanese Demystified and Japanese From Zero 1. I’d say the real downside to most my books is lack of Audio. I’ll find some use out of them all though.@ everyone
After doing a quick Google search, it seems the publisher of the book Kodansha International shut down in April last year. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110304a1.htmlThis would explain why JSPFEC and some other Kodansha books are now out of print and being sold for inflated prices. I hope in the future these books will be republished again as it would be a shame if they let their line of books just die out.
I’d recommend to keep looking in local book stores, used book stores, libraries, or at sites like Index provided, etc, just on the off chance JSPFEC is available at a decent price.
@Missing and kanjiman:
‘Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don’t Tell You’ by Jay Rubin is another gem actually. It’s an excellent book, but probably not for complete beginners. It’s worth reading just for the ~20 pages on は vs が alone, but the book is full of good stuff.
@kanjiman:
If you were to buy any other books I would suggest that the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series should be your priority. Start with Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and then get the Intermediate and Advanced ones when possible. They are by far the best resource I’ve bought for Japanese and I maintain that every learner should try to own them.
I also own Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication, but didn’t really get anything out of it since I had already learned it all through textbooks and Tae Kim’s site. I think it would have been a nice resource if I’d bought it earlier in my learning, but the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series has much more content, more example sentences and better explanations/notes too (though obviously being a dictionary makes it somewhat different to use).
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This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by
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