The book series みんなの日本語
 

Hi

I'm currently studying japanese with the Minna no Nihongo book and I'm almost done with the first one.

I think I've learned quite a lot with this book, but still it is very hard to read text outside of the book (you don't learn to much Kanjies with it) and when I try to wite something I realize that there are lots of things I still don't know :(

Anyway, the course I'm into now is going to end in Feb. In the next term there may be a continuation of this course. Since this may be the last "advanded" course (no more than 5 people are going to do it) and the at the time nobody knows which teacher is going to teach, it is unlikely that we start with the second Minna no nihongo book.

Does anybody have the second book of the Minna no Nihongo series? Do yo recomend it? I would buy the book and learn by myself, but buying the whole set is rather expensive and before I invest lots of money I would like to know if I will learn more with it.

Thanks

I can't speak for Minna no Nihongo, but I suggest you start learning kanji as much as possible (the plural of "kanji" is "kanji" in English like the plural of "fish" is "fish" (usually)). All of these textbooks severely deprive you of kanji, and my opinion is that it hamstrings you for future growth in the language. No textbook makes you learn kanji fast enough, and eventually you hit a point where you speak the language very well, but can't read for crap because you only know like 500 kanji.

Yes, I've already started learning kanji by myself. I've got a long list (I don't remeber the name of the book where the list came from) and I try to learn with it.

The plurar of kanji in German is "Kanjis" that's why I got confused :o

Well 500 kanji is pretty good if you only have gone through an elementary Japanese book. I mean you still have a lot of Japanese still to learn afterwards never mind kanji. Also supplementing textbook learning with a Kanji book is generally a good idea isn't it?

No, I'm saying, categorically, that 500 is a horrendously low number, and I was thinking more after you finish Yookoso Vols. 1 and 2, which would be a 2-year affair. I would hope you'd have 15/wk*52wk/yr*2yr=1500 by then. Even 10/wk means you'd have over 1000.

And as for supplementation with a kanji workbook, that is precisely what I was advocating. Kanji in Context is a good book.

If you finish both Yookoso books, you're very nearly at JLPT2-level grammar, but you're about at JLPT3 kanji and vocabulary.

That is what I meant by not enough emphasis placed on kanji (and vocab).

So grammatically, you're well-prepared to read the newspaper, but nowhere near prepared on a vocab/kanji level. You'll spend another year just learning enough kanji to catch up to your grammar level.

That looks like a good book. I was wondering early about what materials exist pushing past the 1,000 Kanji barrier (although I'm not nearly ready for that :S, need to finish Genki II first). You mentioned not enough emphasis on vocabulary too. I find Kanji is a good way of learning extra vocabulary and using it in context allows the words and the kanji to act as crutches for learning each other (especially since I find that learning vocabulary out of context can give a wrong impression about the words true meaning). Maybe I should look into this book in the future. Thanks for the link.

Minna no Nihongo 2 can be downloaded for free here LINK REMOVED
Also, just my opinion; I think Living Languages "Ultimate Japanese; Basic-Intermediate" is an awesome book, really thorough explainations of grammar, although they only teach you around 150 kanji, however, kanji is something you learn by your self on the web, I taught my self about 500 with out a textbook :) and hands-down the best audio-only course for learning Japanese is the Michel Thomas Method (which you can also find for free on the internet) WAY better than Pimsluer IMO, I'm using the MT method for Russian too :mtongue: .

Best of luck!

Sorry, I did read the rules when I joined, but I must have missed that. Thank you for telling me. I'll try to keep that in mind when I'm here. :ywave: Once again, I'm very sorry.

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By the way; Would it be against the rules to send links to P2P sharing files in private messages?

I think in general an obvious rule is "don't break the law here." Sharing copyrighted material without permission is illegal.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
I don't really agree that P2P sharing is illegal but eh, to be fair, alot of the stuff I download I don't use- and if it's good I will buy it- especially textbooks. Like in this case, the OP wants to see if it's any good, if it is good, they'd buy it. I've downloaded alot of CRAP that I was so glad I didn't pay for and didn't even use, so I don't consider it stealing. Like the Pimsluer 'Advanced' audio course- what a joke, they charge like $200 for it, I listened to the final lesson of it, discovered that it was super basic stuff and immediatly deleted it. Should I pay $200 for that? We just want a preview to see what we're getting.

And BTW, the other products I mentioned that were good I did actually buy :mtongue:

If you have the publisher's permission, then feel free to go right ahead, otherwise please respect the creator's right not to give his work away for free.

Whether something is illegal or not is a matter of fact, not opinion. I don't really care whether you think something is legal. Your opinion doesn't matter one iota as to whether an act is actually proscribed by law.

And yeah, technically P2P sharing isn't illegal in and of itself. For example, I can share movies made in the 1910s and that is legal. I can share on P2P something I wrote, or a Shakespeare play in the public domain.

However, sharing a copy of Genki or Yookoso or Minna no Nihongo is definitely copyright infringement, which is illegal. It can even be a criminal act if you share it enough.

And don't confuse morality with legality. I happen to agree with you: I believe it is moreally permitted to give someone a pirated copy of a textbook so they can evaluate it and decide whether they want to make a purchase. However, that does not affect its legality. You get sued based on laws, not morals. Thus, MMM (rightly) is concerned with policing law, not morality.

Well, he might be concerned with policing some morality, but only because it's an unspoken site policy. For example, I hesitate every time I think about using a profanity here despite its complete legality.

I have no interest in policing an individual's morality. I am simply interested (as are other mods) in keeping this site clean and safe for all users. What people do away from JF is none of my business.

Ah, sorry to get you guys riled up. Don't get me wrong, I was glad that MMM told me (I even said so). I was just saying that the whole P2P debate in general makes me mad, but I wasn't directing it at anyone in particular on this board. Just stating my opinion. I have no intention of breaking the rules here and I see the logic in them and agree. You don't don't want any trouble and I understand the reason for that rule. As I am a user of the site, it's my duty to obey these rules or I don't deserve to be here. Everything is peachy-keen, I'll do as I'm told. ;) Sorry if it seemed like I was back-sassing you guys.

No, it didn't really sound like it. It just sounded like a teenager talking about about the laws is cramping his style ;) hahaha

And I think MMM's comment was more prompted by what I said than what you did, since I brought the morality/legality divide into issue. He's a good dude. I think you are, too.

thanks for the many comments.

@StonerPenguin: stop arguing whether its legel to download it or not, this is not what I've asked. And yes, I know how to use google and rapidshare but I won't certainly download the book. First, because learning japanese is more than a hobby to me, it's like a investment in the feature. Second, using books is much more confortable than using low quality images.

@SceptileMaster, KyleGoetz: well, I would be very happy If I knew 500 kanji, yes indeed... but I'm not that far :crykitty: anyway, what book is you are talking about? I mean Yookoso, I didn't find anything close than "Yookoso! Study Japanese language, Kanji; learn about Japanese travel, culture, life, music (JPOP) and more" (from where I got the link to this forum in the first place ;))

Well, I can remeber rather quickly new kanji. But I also realized that remebering them is not always what it matters because if I don't use them frequently then I forget them (well I recognize them when reading). This is a problem, even if I buy a book with kanji to learn from, it would be a waste of time. There must be a better solution to this problem.

of course I want to learn as much kanji as possible, but I would try to learn them when I can use them more frequently, that means when I can write text without consulting my text book for nearly every sentence. That's why I wanted to know in the first place, whether Minna no Nihongo 2 is as good as the first one. This question remains unanswered ;)

edit: typos fixed

Thanks Kyle, you're awesome. Sorry about the confusion ;)

This is the Yookoso I was talking about: Amazon.com: yookoso
The textbook my uni uses.

In my opinion, the best two kanji books are these:
Amazon.com: Kanji ABC: A Systematic Approach to Japanese Characters (0676251819571): Andreas Foerster, Naoko Tamura: Books
Amazon.com: kanji in context

The first is a pretty unique system, and I thought it was good. The other I used in Japan.

About how much kanji does each "Kanji in context" book teach? And it's funny that people are selling it used for over $100, when you can buy it new for $50... Why is it so exspensive?

My edition (there are more joyo kanji now than when I lived in Japan with this book) has 1,947 kanji according to the front flap.