Quote:
Originally Posted by GTJ
Some do?? Jeez, that's not even practical. The Japanese are impressed enough if you even attempt to speak their language, never mind their reaction when you bust out sonkeigo and kenjyougo. I can't imagine starting from there; it'd probably mess you up real good from the get-go.  |
As the ます form is keigo, you should realize that pretty much
all textbooks start out with keigo (as MMM said above). That's my point: They shouldn't.
Textbooks are unfortunately written to get people to a simple level of conversation ability quickly, not to improve the chances of long-term growth in ability.
I can't tell you how many times I've on my own noticed little tricks about the language that would be obvious to anyone who learned plain form first but weren't to me since I started with polite. I'd point these tricks/interesting things out to my classmates, and they'd all be shocked, having never noticed this stuff themselves.
Starting with plain form, you teach past. Then say "switch all the ending a's in past with e's and you have the conjunctive form.
Instead, te-form is taught on its own out of left field before you even get to plain form. Silly.
Additionally, starting out with polite form first seriously screws with people's later understanding of the difference between ます and the honorific and humble forms. "Wait, how can I do a plain honorific? Don't they cancel each other out??"-type stuff.
I'm just saying teaching masu before plain form is pedagogically unsound unless a university only cares about teaching the basics.
But thansk for the suggestions thus far. Yookoso covers keigo quite well. I was just wondering if there were supplemental things out there, like ALC has put out for some very high-level Japanese stuff.