Sites You Should Not Use To Learn Japanese
 

I think this should be made a sticky, and just post sites we think have little, no, or negative pedagogical value.

123japanese.com
Why? There are multiple misspellings of basic words, basically it only uses romaji, and someone there has disclosed to me that not everything that goes on the site is even reviewed by someone who speaks Japanese well.

Can we append that to "speaks Japanese to a native level" for the sake of fairness. The creator obviously knows some Japanese; the person who suggested it says they have studied for several years but they are presenting their knowledge in a flawed way. It's the old thing- Just because you Know, doesn't mean you know everything and does not mean you can Teach.

That is not apparent to me. :) I was there about two minutes, kept seeing errors, and quit looking. And the support staff had this to say to meNote that says "most," not "all." This implies some is reviewed by no Japanese speakers for any definition of "speaker."

It suffices to say that the site is not trustworty. I'll change it to "speaks Japanese well" though.

Also, Tae Kim is not a native Japanese speaker and doesn't speak it natively (as per his personal blog). But his written Japanese is indistinguishable from a native's at my level of Japanese. Regardless, what he purports to teach is well within his abilities to do, regardless of whether he speaks at a native level. But his site is still eminently trustworthy.

Heck, I'm not a native speaker, but I can still teach many Japanese lessons and be 99–100% accurate. Speakingwise is a different matter. Get to around third-year Japanese at a US university and it would be harder for me. I'd imagine MMM and Nyororin could teach a full four years of written Japanese. I don't know if they have non-native accents that could hinder their speaking instruction, but their writing is excellent. If either of them had a Japanese teaching site, I would likely trust it. But by their own admission, neither speaks natively or at a native level.

Instead of bashing the website maybe we should help point out the errors to them. Building a website is hard and I must say that website has the most information I've seen. They are trying. Why bash them when we can help them. Its not like its a horrible website. Those errors were just little mistakes. Missing a second letter. The site didn't seem to follow the "oo change to "ou" rule. Which in romaji, there isn't really rules because its romaji.

Their website does say that a lot of it is under construction.

The person who made the website must know a lot about Japanese because a lot of information is there. Spelling mistakes indicate that they just typed it wrong. Just like any english site, there can be mistakes they just need to be pointed out.

Ah, I didn't see the addendum from the site. You make some good points that I hadn't considered in the argument and you're right, native and knowledge may not be synonymous. That's kind of what I was trying to say with Knowing not necessarily meaning you can teach.

With all due respect, you're also a complete beginner and you yourself admitted you don't know what to be looking for to judge the value of this kind of learning website. If you had, you wouldn't have asked for a second opinion. I'm only an intermediate (maybe lower advanced) level student but I've looked at a LOT of sites and a LOT of textbooks and so have a lot of people on this site. There is a huge difference between volume of content and correctness, and volume of content and worthwhile information. This site has a moderate amount of content, but it also has a significant number of errors at a BASIC level. If it cannot manage the basics, then it should not be trusted with more complex information either. Would you trust a teacher to teach you maths if they told you 12x5 was 62? I wouldn't.

This is not to say that the site ~cannot~ or ~will not~ improve. But in it's current state, it needs much more work to make it a valuable resource for beginner Japanese students. I agree, it would be great if people could volunteer to help refine it, but there are other great websites already available.

^^; My post is actually for your benefit. 'oo' doesn't always change to 'ou' when writing. Words I can think of this are 大きい（おおきい） ookii. Also,　通る（とおる） tooru.

Hahaha, and here I should also sort of contradict myself. Even in romaji there are rules and set ways of writing it. :|

I'm not bashing them. I'm telling noobs not to use the site. There's a difference. Your suggestion would essentially be to encourage people to use a site that is known to have shoddy pedagogical standards.I don't want a teacher who tries. I want a teacher who teaches me correct information. Because I don't want to help a site that is trying to teach Japanese and doing a poor job. I want to tell people to avoid it. Wrong.A lot of little mistakes add up to a big mistake. Or, you know, completely misspelling "chiitaa" as "cheeta," e.g. Which is precisely another reason the site is crap.

Good for them. Do you want to learn from a textbook that is still being edited?

Not true.Not when a large percentage of words have spelling mistakes. It indicates the person making the site does not speak Japanese to any degree necessary to teach it.

This is true, there are a few styles of romanization for Japanese, just like chinese and I assume Korean. The biggest problem with roomaji, other than reading english letters, is that each person breaks up words differently when they write in roomaji. Along with that, if someone was to write with NO spaces in roomaji it would be a huge, difficult to read mess. Roomaji doesn't come with the added benefit of kanji to help easily discern words when you're reading a sentence.

Edit: I'm not trying to pile on, here, but with regard to more information meaning more knowledge I will call direct BS on that. I am a college student, and if there's one thing I'm good at doing, it's adding lots of superfluous information or varying sentence structure to say the same thing and lengthen papers. What could probably be expressed in 2 pages may be done in 4 because I'm more descriptive or wordy than I need to be.

Another website that no one tends to suggest (because it's shorter) but is helpful nonetheless, is nihongoresources.com. Also, if you're interested he's got a big 関西弁（かんさいべん）Kansai-ben word list that I've seen referenced in other things that teach/discuss Kansai-ben.

I noticed that. Even when you use the same system to transliterate the characters, the spacing seems to be a free-for-all. I'd personally never put a space in 'konnichiwa' but others will. Never mind the homonym thing as you said. "ii kami desu ne!"

It may be good, but is it hair, a god or some paper? Who knows!

Well the websites not going away. Its still there. So posting how bad it is isn't going to stop the errors. Its best if we correct those errors so the people who already view the website wont get confused.

The #1 reason you should never use a site that teaches in romaji is this:

nya
nyo
nyu

Are these にゃ, にょ, にゅ or んや, んよ, んゆ? Because it makes a hell of a lot of difference.

See, now I'm kinda suspicious. You came on JF asking for input on whether a site would be good for you to learn Japanese. IE implying: "Hello JF, I found this random site, totally unrelated to me, that I was thinking of using. What do you think?" Now you're being VERY defensive when we say we don't think it is.

You're blatantly pushing the site and asking for help to improve it, and it's in your sig. I'm just going to go ahead and guess you know whoever runs the site, or indeed are part of the team yourself.

If so that's rather trollish and dishonest.

Its no a random site I found I've been studying form it for a long time. Recently some people have told me when I asked that its not a good website. So I thought I would ask opinion of this forum. The website isn't unrelated to me because I've been useing it.

Why and how the hell would I run a website.

I'll be honest: I wondered the same thing from the get-go.

Regardless, I don't care too much whether it's true. It doesn't affect me, and I'll leave my thread up and try to edit the OP when other sites are suggested and I agree that the suggested sites are also not good.

Suffice it to say the site should not be used when there are such better ones out there already.

Ugh. You should suspect her of being someone who knows someone who made the website. Thats my little sister. I helped make the website. Its just some little website that me and my friends made for ourselves mostly. I don't know why she did this.

The vocab section has been proof read by people who apparently knew how to proof read. but i guess not. The lists were taken from websites that were up along time ago, and some words added. When we made the website the stuff we used was written on paper. I suppose it all got lost in translation.

Ignore what my sister said shes only a kid and shes shy and silly. I guess she was trying to defend our website which it doesn't need any defending, it is crap.

But now that I am here. Is there anyone who is actually willing to point our some of the errors and proof read it. Anyone who proof read in the past failed obviously.

Only on the condition that you switch from romaji to kana. Anyone who needs to know how to say "brown brush warbler" in Japanese should be able to read kana already.

I know it sounds like I'm being a bit of a bully, but I honestly think it would be a waste of my time to make romaji corrections. Maybe someone here thinks differently, and you'll have better luck.

Regardless, you and your people do seem to be nice and reasonable, so I do wish you the best of luck in getting things good to go.

As a sign of good faith, I'll go through the first vocab list and put them up in Japanese and include kana if there's kanji in the Japanese.

I'm whipping up a Python script to do the initial vocab stuff for me. I'll post the mammals wordlist here soon.

Edit:
Full disclosure: there are a few animals I didn't know in Japanese (seven years, and I've never had to say "wolverine"), so I had to look them up. The rest were auto-generated from the Python script I whipped up, and I scanned over the list to make sure they're correct. It worked pretty well, only pulling about five incorrect words. I corrected those in a jiffy.

Thats a good point. Your right. Anyone who wants to learn the "brown brush warbler" in Japanese should be able to read the kana. I never thought of it that way.

Perhapse I would be very benificial to have both romaji and the correct japanese text becide it.

I suppose when we were making the website we were only thinking about those who don't know kana instead of those who already do.

As someone who likely knows more Japanese than you (I don't know you, so I have to infer from the circumstances) and more experience learning the language as well, I strongly suggest you completely excise romaji from the site. All it does is hurt learners: they'll subconsciously keep looking at the romaji to check if they're reading it correctly, and this is something that is drastically detrimental to learning the language.

You should know kana within a week of studying Japanese, and pretty much nothing other than "dog" and "cat" on that list should be encountered in that first week.

Edit: Just wanted to say again that I think your heart's in the right place, and you seem like a good dude.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, romaji is nothing more than a crutch. And it needs to be disposed of as quickly as possible. I started learning Japanese my 3rd year in college as an elective course, and my teacher (native Japanese) did us all the great service of making us have all the hiragana memorized within a few weeks of the start of the course. Any good teacher (whether teaching majors, minors, or curious elective takers) will know that having students depend on romaji is no way to help them on their Japanese learning journey.

And no offense to the site is intended here, especially considering you are not college professors, nor are you pretending to be.

I wouldn't make such a list. Drawing attention to really bad websites has an effect you don't expect: you actually increase the website's visibility, and you increase its search engine ranking. If a website is so bad that no benefit can be gained from it, the best thing to do is to ignore it.

I did make this thread a sticky for now.

I am suspicious of the negativity towards this thread. We have "what is the worst food" and other negative threads, but this one is actually useful.

There are good sites, and bad sites.

Practically, it is not possible to learn Japanese pronunciation using romaji.

Kana only takes a few weeks to learn...for some faster for others slower, but hiragana is only 60 something characters.

The longer you go using romaji, the longer it will take you to break the bad habits you develop, and will actually slow your learning down.

A link in your signature implies you are associated with the site. At least that is what I assume.

That's a good point. I'll consider it, but for right now it seems the tide is in favor of outing bad sites.

Of course, this site could inadvertently become a way of "shaming" sites into getting better. That would actually be a better outcome than just steering people away from sites made by people who want to help teach but just aren't quite skilled enough by themselves.

I am trying to make this website better. If I would have known I would have stoped my sister from posting links. There is lots of errors we didn't spell check all the areas of the website. Some information is missing and links don't work. We were in the middle of "under construction" but some people who use the website wanted it up, so we kept it up.

We really want to correct the problems and listen to your feedback about the romaji. As well as kana stroke order, we were in the middle of working on that, it is very important to know.

Even pretty much all the kanji are missing, we never uploaded them. We never created most of the images yet either.

I don't think you need to bother steering people away from bad sites. There are roughly one and a half bazillion bad sites out there about Japanese language alone. For example, randomly click a few links from these pages of links, and I'm sure you'll find things which are very similar to 123japanese:

• Jim Breen's Japanese Page
• Keiko Schneider's Bookmarks
• Japanese Language 日本語 ____
• Best Japanese Websites

The point is that nobody is ever going to find or visit those sites anyway. Sorting through all those millions and millions of "low information content" sites and telling people to avoid them is not a productive use of your time. It's better to make a list of sites which ARE worth visiting, and it will be enough work just keeping that up to date.

1. Are you joking? Jim Breem is the godfather of one of the best online dictionary sites out there. It is a high information...one of the highest information...sites on the net.

I visit this site every day.

2. Link dump: There is no content.

3. This one has a lot in kana. Nice. But is mostly a link dump.

4. Another link dump.

But can the same be said about the huge jungle of links there? I think that is what BenBullock meant. There are countless pages that are totally awful mixed in.

Just because the link itself is on a good page doesn`t mean that the content is good.

I think maybe Ben meant that the link he gave on Breen's site links to a bunch of other sites, and some of the other sites are not that good.

I know Ben and Jim know each other and have for a long time. The two of them are regulars at the same place on USENET. I highly doubt Ben was saying Jim isn't up to snuff. I admit that I read his post the same way the first time, too, and if I didn't know Ben and Jim knew each other, I probably would have stayed at the conclusion you made, MMM.

Please could you read my message before replying? :( I said " randomly click a few links from these pages of links, and I'm sure you'll find things which are very similar to 123japanese".

For example, at Jim Breen's page, I find the following dodgy sites (I'm deliberately de-linking them):

www dot omoshiroieigo dot com

That is about the same kind of thing as 123japanese.

Here's another one:

www dot ara-maa dot com

It's almost content free.

And, here's another one:

thejapaneseproject dot com


As it happens I was just writing an email to Jim Breen about some of the broken links there. E.g.

diagrammar dot photonjungle dot com

is now a domain squatter

www dot myjapaneselessons dot com

is a broken site, the Java is just spewing errors.

Don't forget to proof-read all your english as well. I spotted a few hiccups whilst I was browsing.

Yea I I know. Soo much to proof read for 3 people. + fix the Japanese errors and add the missing content.

I think you can understand where my misunderstanding was.

I was under the impression that Jim Breen was basically retired. Is that not true?

Wow that’s a big insult to my website. That page hardly has any information let alone lessons. My website doesn't just consist of vocabulary there’s a whole lesson page full of EVERYTHING. Verbs, How to congregate them, sentence structure, Particles, Adjectives, everything.

I believe the only flaws are the spelling errors. Lack of kanji and explanation on the stoke order. You people consider Romaji to be the devil. I believe I am going to ad kana to the vocabulary section, because yes, people who are learning these not so common animals should know how to read Japanese. It would be a good tool for those who want to kanji or kana for that "thing". But the lessons, No. Anyone who is learning Japanese isn't going to just jump into learning how to write it before speaking it. Reading it in romaji its the equivalent to being in a learning environment. What I mean is, obviously the website doesn't consist of a person following you around always speaking the language like you would learn as a baby. When your a baby you learn to speak first, then read. Well we can't do the "follow you around and speak" on this website so the only equivalent is reading what you already know how to read.

If you expected every learner to just jump in and learn the kana before learning to speak the language, then a lot of people would stop learning. It doesn't take a week to learn to read. It takes a week to learn the strokes and have them memorized. I know all the hiragana and katakana, but when I pick up a piece of Japanese literature, I read extremely slow, and you have to sound out every bit. That’s because it takes a while to learn to read. In English, my native language, I look at a sign, and you see the whole word, you don't have to sound out "waaalllllmaaarrrrttt" no. you don't even have to read over every letter.

People take a few months to learn how to read, just like you take a few months to know how to read in your own native language. My baby brother who is 6 knows all the alphabet and how to write them, but can he read. No. Barely.

Besides all that, My lessons will remain in romaji because anyone who is reading through the lessons, usually doesn't know how to read fluently in Japanese, otherwise why would they want to read "how to say hello" "how to congregate a verb" someone who is fluent in reading, usually understands what they are reading. so why would they go to the lessons. My lessons are not for advanced students.

You've basically made our argument for us. You get better at reading by reading, and to motivate people to read you need to tell them "if you want to learn more than 'hello'," you must know how to read."

If they quit, they never would have gotten skilled in the first place. Learning Japanese is really, really hard. If they can't stick it out two weeks to learn kana, they won't stick it out anyway. I don't know anyone skilled in Japanese who didn't know how to read it within the first couple weeks of studies.

I knew hiragana before I knew anything but the basic greetings. I suspect MMM and Nyororin and delacroix are similar.

I've seen a lot of your site. Most of what is taught should be taught after kana. This is the way it is. To say otherwise is to disagree with PhDs from tons of countries whose field of study is Japanese pedagogy. Research supports what we say. Experience supports what we say.

You're not disagreeing with us. You're disagreeing with an army of educators and hundreds of years of experience. Heck, thousands of years of combined experience.

Regardless, I think things are getting out of hand. It's very silly to teach almost any vocab word in romaji because no one will need the romaji who ought to be learning the word. But we've already discussed that.

But I'm telling you: You are indefensibly wrong on the romaji issue. The facts are just not with you.

(Obviously there is an exception if you're teaching survival Japanese to tourists.)

I learned basic sentances and vocabulary before I even started to learn how to write Japanese. I still am focusing more on speaking than writing. Thats the way you are taught when you are a child. You don't teach a child to write a language as they are learning to speak it. Learning to read is not an easy task.

I don't belive that saying If you don't learn to speak as you read you will never or hardly know how to read. Reading is a different thing than learning to speak a language. Again, It takes more than 2 weeks for someone to know how to read. Unless you are some kind of super child. Tell me one child who learned the alphabet and suddenly knew how to read after two weeks. My brother, and everyone in his class, every kid I know of, even when I, and my friend were in kindergarden and learning to write. We learned the alphabet, but couldn't use it, because it take a few months to learn how to read.

Let me just say first that I hope we can keep the conversation at a respectable level of discourse. I think it is fascinating topic, but I realize we are talking about people's personal works here, so let's make sure not to make it, or take it, personally.

I started learning hiragana on day 1 or 2 of my Japanese study. I can't remember how many weeks it took to get it down, but once it was down we dropped the romaji like a hot potato.

I think that is a good philosophy to go by if you are learning for any sort of long-term goal.

Romaji is not good for learning pronunciation, and since not all sounds in Japanese exist in English, using the alphabet to write them impedes learning. Reading how to speak is like reading how to play a musical instrument. Words on a page cannot completely convey the correct and proper ways to communicate.

For example:

U is pronounced like "oo" like in "put".

You are from Canada, right? Because this is not correct for American English speakers. う is more "oo" in moose (for me) but different English dialects will have different pronunciations. Therefore is is better to learn the proper pronunciation of う and all the others from proper sources.

I am from Canada. Its impossible to teach pronounciation from reading a paper DEFINATELY. We are making a instructional video to replace that section to avoid the problems with pronouncing. I belive thought once someone knows the proper pronounciation of something, they can read it properly. Romaji or Kana, same thing, its both a little image, once you know how to pronoucnce it then you know how to. You can't learn to pronounce by looking at a word thought, which is why we are making a video for that section. I belive once that is up, then there wont be much confusion.

My response would be if you are going to learn pronunciation by (relearning) romaji, you are better serving yourself by simply learning hiragana.

Even with proper pronunciation, romaji is more difficult to read than hiragana. Anyone who doesn't think so hasn't mastered kana.

Japanese has a beat that is timed out by the characters. Two kana is two beats. Three kana is three beats. This is important when we get to long vowels and small つ. However, that vital point is lost in romaji. You cannot see the "beats" for proper pronunciation, because there is no visible distinction between the kana and they are not all the same length. (Some are one letter, some two, and some three.) In kana there are right there, like notes on a music sheet.

Yea maybe if you didn't have any knowledge of how Japanese is then you would pronounce it wrong. When I look at a word thats in romaji. I dont sound it out like I would in English. I know that Japanese sounds go like "a i u e o, ka ki ku ke ko, and so on". So when I see a word in Japanese, I know what the letters would look like in the correct kana. If your stupid you will start learning a language without knowing the alphabet sounds. I don't really know how to explain what I am trying to say....

I am saying if you are going to take the time to learn proper pronunciation, why would you NOT learn the kana?

Again, it is easier to read kana than it is romaji. Only someone who doesn't read kana would say that isn't true.

Romaji is a crutch, and anyone who has had a broken ankle will tell you that you can't use the crutch forever. If you don't learn to walk without it, your ankle will never get stronger.