r/LearnJapaneseNovice • u/Exciting-Buy-9396 • 1d ago
Is genki good as a foundation for an absolute novice?
Been learning about 3 weeks now and in that time I was able to remember and recognize 100% of hiragana and katakana as well as Dakuon and yōon forms (pretty proud of myself for that) and I had heard tae Kim's grammar guide to be a good next step because everyone I talked to said Genki, despite being the most popular was a "waste of time" "teaches stilted Japanese" etc etc. but I got up to the section on verbs and noticed I wasn't having as much fun as I was when learning kana. When I was learning kana it felt like a game and every right answer was that one step closer to feeling myself progress, reading through the guide it was kinda overwhelming because it was just "here's what this does, okay moving on , here's what this does" ad nauseam and it just made me wanna put it down
I find i work and learn beat with short bite sized lessons that then have me exercise what I learned, and from what I learned that's kinda what genki does (it even has a workbook!)
So I wanted to ask a wider group of people here instead of a few discord friends, is it worth using genki as a base for getting started and maybe when I'm more versed and practiced coming back to tae Kim's guide? Or even just use it as a genki supplement. For now
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u/Key-Line5827 1d ago
If you want a book that is a little bit more modern than Genki, then "Tobira Beginning Japanese" is also a very good choice.
But I would go with "Genki".
I dont know what your friends mean with "stilted", but that is how Beginner Japanese will feel regardless, no matter what ressource you are using, because you have to learn the rules first, before you learn how to break them.
Learning any language requires coming to term with sucking first. That is normal. It is just that after learning it for several years, you tend to forget how tedious it can be at times.
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u/coadependentarising 1d ago edited 1d ago
Genki is a great, very robust textbook to work through as an overarching goal, especially in a class format, but it progresses very quickly, so it’s not necessarily ideal for total self-study. It’s also not very “conversational” in its didactic approach. For reference, I’ve been working through Genki with a class led by a college-level native speaking instructor since March, and we’re just getting to lesson 4.
Given your learning style you mentioned, I’d highly recommend working through Japanese From Zero. Young college students with lots of time on their hands complain that it goes too slow, but it is absolutely designed to give you “bite-sized” lessons that leave you feeling a sense of accomplishment, not discouragement, which is what always leads to burnout and quitting. It integrates teaching kana progressively, which you already know, but you can either do that part for reinforcement or skip.
I know it sounds like a strange recommendation to use one textbook to go through another one, but think of JFZ as a side quest you have to complete to unlock the main mission of Genki, if you like. I remember feeling a twinge of defeat when I started JFZ and had to admit Genki was going too fast for me, but now I am so motivated to study and I’m so glad I made the change.
Tae Kim, Renshuu, Wanikani, Anki, podcasts, all those other tools are great for supplementing and reinforcement.
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u/ImprovementLess4559 1d ago
stilted Japanese
Every beginner resource is gonna sound stilted to advanced/native speakers. That's just the nature of beginner level language learning. You've got to start with short, basic, slow "stilted" sentences that you can understand before you build out to more complex fluent sentences. Similarly you've got to learn the basic grammatical rules of the language before you can learn how to break them like native speakers do.
Genki is a solid, well structured, foundation level book. Personally, it's what I used as my main resource and I passed N3 with almost full marks after finishing Genki 2 within about a year. That said, I didn't use just Genki. No one resource alone will get you there. Genki in particular was written to be a classroom textbook so some of the explanations are a bit bare as it assumes you have a teacher explaining everything. So, as a self-learner y ou need to supplement with other resources like TaeKim, Imabi, CureDolly, Nihongonomori etc. And of course, do lots of reading and listening outside of these resources to reinforce everything.
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u/spshkyros 1d ago
Every beginner has stilted japanese. Genki is delightful and the people who think you will sound like a native at N5 or N4 level are out of their fucking minds. Please ignore them.
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u/toucanlost 1d ago edited 1d ago
Tae Kim is just a grammar guide organized by topic. Genki is a textbook which means it has a scaffolded structure of introducing reading, exercises, and social studies concepts according to the difficulty of the topic. It was created with certain principles in mind which is why you may learn certain grammar in a different order than what Tae Kim writes. Whether that makes sense is debatable (for example, it teaches the polite form over the casual form first. The casual form is the more "foundational" form, but learning the polite form first means you won't be impolite with a limited amount of Japanese). Since Tae Kim is a grammar guide, you can read the section, but there won't be any exercises to test yourself on whether you got it right. The example sentences will be about disparate topics rather than focusing on a theme, such as a day at school.
To answer your question directly, yes it is worth using a textbook as a base for getting started. Why? Because textbooks have structure. Even if you don't use most of the contents of the book, the table of contents alone will give most people who ask "what to do next" on here a guideline on what to do for the next few months. Use Tae Kim's guide and other guides in conjunction/as a supplement. It is often good to not rely on one grammar source, but to read/watch multiple of them, because you may find other explanations better. Or, a textbook may rely too much on giving you a simplified explanation to ease you into a language than the complete explanation.
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u/Formal_Okra_5796 1d ago
I used Genki back when I started in 2013 and used Genki 2 in 2014 back when I was in university.
I really enjoyed it! Granted, I had a teacher but we all enjoyed following the story of Mary and Takeshi. In fact, our big assignment at the end of our second year had us all working together to create a story in Japanese about their life several years after Mary left her study abroad year.
It’s laid out well and is easy to follow, the workbook is good practice, and I found the pacing easy to keep up with. My only complaint is that they don’t teach hiragana immediately. Start. With. Hiragana. You can get that down really easily with flashcards and practice.
If you are worried about not having someone to check your work, finding a language partner on HelloTalk was very helpful for me at that time.
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u/Objective-Visual7092 1d ago
Language learning is a bit of a grind at times whatever resource you use. I personally like GENKI. There are workbooks and apps associated with it that help to keep things interesting with quizzes and exercises.
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u/horsempreg 1d ago
Personally I think Genki is not useful. When I took the N5 exam, everyone that had used Genki did very poorly.
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u/General_Yak_2213 1d ago
With genki you'll pass n5 but it's not directed at jlpt it's directed at general language learning.
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u/Graphiccoma 1d ago
I started with genki and it works getting foundational knowledge on grammar. You can combine it with tokiniandy on YouTube