Skip to main content

Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese

I figured for my next study tool review, I'd do a positively free one, Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese. This is an amazing website, and it's as close as you'll get to a free online book. It has its flaws, but it is one of the best tools to help you learn.

First of all, it has lessons and even practice exercises in the kana. Although Power Japanese worked best for me in this regard, Tae Kim does a great job of reinforcing your knowledge as well. It also has basic grammar, which you will need to know soon, and advanced topics, although it doesn't flow quite as well as a textbook.

He also has a forum, a wiki, and a blog, all of which will help you as you go along. I should also mention that it's been translated into 9 or 10 languages, so your non-English friends can also check it out.

Now, I wouldn't recommend using this website as your sole source for studying. It's great for reinforcing knowledge, and you might learn a thing or two here and there, but don't start from scratch here. If you're not sure if you want to study Japanese to begin with, then I recommend looking at this site to see if you can commit yourself, but be sure to get a good book as well.

Sorry for the short post, but it's difficult to review a website. Just take my word for it that once you begin your Japanese studies, this site will be indispensable!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review for Rosetta Stone

I told you I wasn’t gone for good! Today I’m going to be mostly bashing Rosetta Stone’s language learning software. This review goes for Rosetta Stone whether you’re learning Japanese or any other language that this software purports to teach. It purports to teach because Rosetta Stone is particularly bad at teaching anything, except how to look at pictures and repeat words. It’s aimed mostly for travelers, but doesn’t really get you conversing, and it’s expensive to boot. Really, there’s only a couple things it does well, but this isn’t enough to make up for all the failing this software does. If anyone from Rosetta Stone actually reads this, please use the criticism to improve your software! You probably already know that Rosetta Stone teaches you language easily, right? I mean, that’s what the advertisements always tell us! What Rosetta Stone tells us and what it actually does are like night and day, but if you really don’t know much about Rosetta Stone, here’s what allegedl...

Review for LingQ - Redone!

I really wanted to do a review for LingQ , and I wound up doing a long and crazy post about things that didn't have much to do with LingQ. As such, I am redoing this post in hopes of better clarifying what LingQ is and how well it works. For starters, anyone even remotely familiar with Steve Kauffman will know that he's a huge supporter of what is normally called the input method. That basically means that you learn a language simply through exposure to it. No grammar drills, just listening, reading, and anything else you can think of that will expose you to the language. As such, that is exactly what LingQ strives to do. The most frustrating thing about learning an Asian language through the input method, in my opinion, is that if you're reading a book or a non-editable pdf, if you come across a kanji you're not sure how to read, you can't just type it into a dictionary. That frustrates me a lot! That's why LingQ is so good about that. You just hover your mou...

TextFugu: A Second Look

Disclaimer: I still stand by what I said in my post about TextFugu vs. AJATT, that these two things cannot be compared, and this second look doesn't change that. TextFugu is a product of the academic method; namely, it is more step-by-step and focused than anything from the other methods. That said, if you're doing things the AJATT way and are looking for a good textbook to supplement or solidify your learnings, please look elsewhere are TextFugu is too large a commitment financially speaking to use as a suppliment for AJATT or any other input or output method. So, some time has gone by and TextFugu has grown bigger and better, and I think it warrants a second look. Last time I reviewed it , TextFugu was a smaller site with infrequent and, seemingly, inconsistent updates; now it is a sprawling site full of good information and I can fully endorse it. Anyone who wishes to learn primarily by textbook ( input and output people , this is probably not for you), TextFugu is a great...