LLearn Japanese

Learning Japanese at Middlebury, using Genki II, running into the occasional vocab issue

Hi everyone!

I'm studying Japanese right now at Middlebury's summer program and I'm really enjoying it. I didn't have much experience except passive listening and knowing hiragana/katakana, but I got placed into level 2. We've been using Genki to learn, which is fine (I know some people hate it, some love it, but it's generally not horrible when supplemented by the rigorous practice we do here at middlebury)

However, I will say Genki does not do a great job at explaining vocabulary nuances whatsoever. For example, a few chapters ago it presented "訳する"　as the verb for "to translate", but in my current chapter, it presents "翻訳する" with the same definition with no clue as to nuance. Other examples are 楽, which was just introduced as comfortable/easy. I'm 99% that this means easy in an "easygoing" way, but there's no explanation. Does anyone have anything they like to do to supplement Genki's vocab or grammar? Are there other things I should use to supplement at this level (I'm not sure if Genki's vocab is all I need to know at this level or if I need to study more words in addition, or if there are some grammar points that it's not telling me)? This is my first time formally learning Japanese (other than learning the scripts a couple of years ago and watching drama/listening to music with no actual focus on the language, I didn't study before coming here). Thanks!

by Easy-Bed-1471

5 comments

  1. That problem will be solved with immersion. Once you start consuming native material you’ll progressively learn in what situation each word is used.

  2. I personally just google those 2 similar words (“XvsY” “X Y 違い”) or my question. World is wide, most questions up to N2 ( and probably a lot after too) have already been asked by some random person on HiNative or Reddit. If it’s too subtle to be understand from said response, it’s probably also too subtle to be worth breaking your head about compared to letting exposure teach your the difference

    I’m not aware of Genki supplementary materials that would prepare vocab for upcoming lessons tho, sry

  3. I’m also a noob, but cross checking jisho for definitions has definitely helped me. chatgpt also does a good job of explaining nuance differences between seemingly same meaning words

  4. Why don’t you ask your instructors for advice given that you’re in a world-renowned language immersion program

  5. Genki is a beginner book, it’s like learning in high school about Newtonian physics and thinking that the book isn’t doing a great job because it didn’t explain general relativity right away.

    It’s all simplified by design, because overloading students with a bunch of nuances is not a good way to teach. Knowing these details is not as important as getting the core grammar and vocab established so you have a base from which to deepen your understanding, knowing a 1000 words well enough is far more useful than in-depth knowledge of 100 words.

    So my advice is not to try to spend time mastering a tiny fragment of the language when really what will be most helpful for you is a rough outline of the whole language that you can use as a support as you dive into immersion, which will fill out that outline better than any analytical approach.

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