Contemporary Japanese Textbook Volume 1: An Introductory Language Course (Audio Recordings Included)

As a teacher myself and a person who only started studying Japanese recently, I really like this book. It is geared towards young people in college but is suitable for anyone. I find it especially useful since I am studying Japanese on my own, though I have a background in Chinese as well...which is a huge help when learning Japanese vocabulary (as much as 45% of current Japanese vocabulary was borrowed, at different points in history, from Chinese) and kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese). The book comes with a CD for the audio portions of the text, though you can also download the audio files from Tuttle online, which I think is easier. Here are the textbook's greatest strengths and very few weaknesses:Pros:---The book is divided into chapters (14 in all) which are further subdivided into lessons (generally three to four lessons per chapter, though the first chapter has seven lessons due to the teaching of hiragana). I really like this organization and restraint in presenting new material.---The content of each lesson is geared towards one 60-to-90-minute class period, designed around a theme, so the student is not overwhelmed with large amounts of material at once. Vocabulary is restricted to around 10-15 items per lesson, and generally only one or two grammar points, often syntactically linked. This provides the student with the opportunity to make incremental progress as the amount of material to be learned in each lesson is very manageable.---The accompanying CDs are essential for accurate reproduction of Japanese sounds, especially the pitch accent which is so important for authentic-sounding speech---and which is often ignored or given short shrift in Japanese textbooks.---The vocabulary sections indicate the pitch accent of words. This is enormously helpful and keeps me from having to constantly go to my Kenkyusha Japanese Dictionary (the best one for beginners!) to find the pitch accent.---The accompanying Workbook is excellent and an absolute "must" if you are going to use this textbook. In some ways, the Workbook is the best part of this series. There are lots of practice exercises in it to supplement the textbook exercises; it comes with its own audio CD (again, you can download the audio files from Tuttle if you prefer); and excellent information about how to use and write the kanji, giving the onyomi (the Chinese pronunciation) and the kunyomi (the native Japanese pronunciation) readings. If you use this textbook, BUY THE WORKBOOK,TOO!---Kanji are taught from the very beginning. The text begins with the basic ones (although the kanji for each vocabulary word is given, if it exists, in the vocabulary list, the student is not required to learn them all at once. For example, the kanji for "teacher" 先生 are taught early, whereas the word for "weekday" 曜日, which is rather complex, would not be required to be learned even though it occurs in the lesson). The Workbook has exercises where the kanji are read with different values (e.g., 人 can be read "hito" or "jin", depending on the context), a really useful exercise.---The text avoids romaji (romanized spelling of Japanese words) in most places. Some romaji occurs in the first chapter, but it vanishes quickly. You are forced to learn to read the kana and kanji, painful at first, but so welcome when you become more experienced and proficient (and it doesn't take long ;).---The Culture Notes are excellent, especially noting possible pitfalls in sentences which would be grammatically correct but culturally inappropriate. They also contain important linguistic and social information (e.g., humble versus polite speech).---The Workbook has a list of all the vocabulary learned in each chapter, making it excellent for frequent review. There is also a master kanji list in the back and broken down into chapters.---The text and the Workbook are very reasonably priced, and Tuttle is coming out in August 2020 with an updated version of Volume 2 and its Workbook. Both volumes together provide a very good introduction to elementary Japanese.---Finally, if you have studied Chinese before studying Japanese, you will reap immediate benefits. Though the two languages belong to completely different families and are linguistically unrelated, the massive borrowings from Chinese (often different from their current modern pronunciation in Standard Chinese, and "Japanized") can really help in learning vocabulary (e.g., "next week" in Japanese in 来週 "raishuu" where "rai" is from Chinese "lai 来" and "shuu" is from "zhou". If you know a few facts about Chinese, e.g., modern "j" was a "k" in the past, cf. Beijing = Peking, you can recognize lots of borrowings). The massive borrowing from Chinese, not to mention the kanji (漢字 = Chinese "hanzi"), make even a modest knowledge of Chinese an enormous help.Cons:---There aren't many, and what some would call a "con" may be desirable for others. The student must master hiragana (one of the Japanese syllabaries) as he dives into the first Chapter. The text and Workbook have introductory lessons on hiragana in this first chapter, so with diligence, the student can progress quickly to the actual speaking of Japanese. (Katakana, the second syllabary needed for writing Japanese and used chiefly for foreign words borrowed into the language, is taught in Chapter 4.) While this is not overwhelming, it does require extra effort in the beginning. If you want to move slowly into learning the two kana systems, there are many excellent books available from Amazon. But if you're serious about learning Japanese, you need to master the kana as quickly as possible.---There are a very few typos I've encountered which could confuse a beginner. Happily, I have only found two (I'm on Lesson 14), and I was able to catch them because I know Chinese."Contemporary Japanese" and its accompanying Workbook are a very student-friendly way to begin the study of Japanese in an organized and systematic way. Highly recommended!

Ho iniziato da poco a studiare il giapponese da autodidatta e trovo questo manuale davvero ben fatto e facile. Tutto molto chiaro in un inglese semplice anche se non mancano vari errori di stampa, sia sul manuale che nel workbook, ma sono facilmente riconoscibili con un po' d'attenzione. Interessante che da subito le parole vengano indicate con la corretta pronuncia tonale. Vengono presentati gradualmente tutti i kana e i kanji più facili ma ritengo sia meglio averli già appresi prima: per questo ci sono gli ottimi testi di Gabarrini.

Was soll der Käse, Lehrbücher zu veröffentlichen, die zwar Übungen enthalten, aber keine Lösungen. Wie, bitte schön, soll man so seinen Lernfortschritt überprüfen?Kannst wiederhaben, den Ranz!!!

There are some things about this textbook that I think will be helpful, such as the detailed comments at the end of the chapters. However, I don't think this would be a good choice for someone new to Japanese and studying without assistance. For example, the early chapters include things like a list of academic majors with kanji clearly displayed but only difficult-to-read furigana above the kanji (needed for pronunciation). A bit of a daunting exercise for someone new to the subject. The attached CD offers only very limited oral practice..

I have been studying from this textbook since almost two months and I can say that it's good. First it shows you some vocabulary so you can learn it and be prepared to the exercises you'll meet. There are dialogs that you can also listen (the book has a CD in it), exercises of reading, writing and speaking. What I've noticed is that there are some typing errors but after all I recommend it. One point that I really appreciate is that there are some cultural aspects at the end of every chapter, that's interesting.