Learning the radicals helps to no end.

No no no, don’t feel bad XD There *isn’t* a search feature here, so you have to specifically know the trick of searching Google like that :D I only did it to show that since so many people have asked before that there must be a problem with the material in the textbook. It’s definitely a confusing issue, so you were right to ask about it. If you become a regular visitor of these forums, see if you can spot how many times people ask about it (and how many times they ask about on- and kun-yomi in general) ;)

There are THAT many kanji lessons now? When I stopped doing them, there couldn’t have been any more than about 70, I reckon. It’s been about 2.5 years though, so that’s probably less than there ought to be.

1. Yep, kanji is essential – the sooner you learn them, the better.

2. I second Japanese for Busy People and Tae Kim, though to be honest, I found Tae Kim quite dense and difficult to follow when I first started – after I learned some more grammar and a lot more vocab though, it turned out to be really great :D It might be different for you, I don’t know.

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/quick-question-%E4%B8%83%E4%BA%BA/
http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/question-about-pronuciation-of-%E4%B8%83%E4%BA%BA/
http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/%E4%B8%83%E4%BA%BA-how-does-it-work/
http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/kunyomi-confusion/
http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/confused-at-these-first-four-kanji/
http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/pronounciation-and-generals-oddities/
http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/pronunciation-problem/
http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/possible-error-in-s02l04-practice-or-vocab/

Just from searching “site:textfugu.com/bb 七人” on Google, so maybe there are more that don’t explicitly mention 七人 or something, I don’t know. It’s a perfectly reasonable question, ForceInfinity, it’s just that I’m annoyed so many people have asked about it yet nothing’s been done on Koichi’s part.

Are you implying something, perchance? =P

I actually wasn’t haha. I was really just putting emphasis on the fact that not a lot of people do. Only after I posted it did I think “Oh wait, didn’t Joel say…” ;)

[Just a point that I thought of while writing this: don't go looking specifically for resources that contain the words "intermediate". If you've covered the stuff that's in TextFugu, you're at a mid-to-upper beginner level at best, there's really not much in it. A lot of courses like to say you're at "intermediate" level after completing, but that's BS, "intermediate" is much more than that.]

guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar – pretty standard fare, everyone seems to use it at some point.

However, if you’re not a fan of ploughing through dry textbooks, do you really want to be specifically *studying* grammar? There are some language learners who are of the opinion that grammar shouldn’t be studied but only *referenced*, by which I mean the language’s grammar is a set of rules to consult when you get stuck rather than to be learned on their own. To quote a video by Steve Kaufman I just watched earlier: ”Grammar is not a curriculum, grammar is a reference source” – from what I remember, he likes to have small books that summarise grammar so he can consult it if needs be, rather than big tomes that explore every single facet in unnecessary detail. He’d rather the grammar come naturally to him through masses of exposure to the language (listening and reading) than wasting time by memorisation of declension tables or subjunctive forms or whatever. Just to point out in case you didn’t know him, Steve Kaufman is a polyglot who’s studied around 15 languages IIRC, so it’s not an uninformed opinion by any means.

Now, I’m not necessarily advocating one approach over another, but it’s something to consider if you’re averse to textbooks. To be fair, I lean more towards studying grammar because I like it and am used to it, but I still think this alternative method is an interesting idea, something to think about. It really just depends what you think is best for your own learning and what you enjoy doing the most.

You could take a combination approach and go for A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar – from what I’ve heard, it’s a great reference source that goes into LOTS of detail on a whole host of different grammatical constructs and various usages for each, and contains lots of example sentences. I’m sure SOME people actually read it cover to cover, but I’m guessing it’s best used like any other dictionary, to look up things when you come to them.

Long post is long…

They put the readings in romaji? Surely if you’re wanting to learn kanji, you’re somewhat serious about learning Japanese; you should be decent at reading kana by then, no?

“What were they thinking?!”
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Edit: Ha, fail of an image embed…
I used the [/ img ] tags.