Feedback on my learning Japanese site?

[Nikolai926]

Hey everyone,

So I've set up a website for Japanese lessons. Before I go writing 3,000 of them, though, I was wondering what everyone's thoughts were on the few that are already up.

http://NihongoShark.com/

Thoughts?

p.s. I hope this is allowed on this forum. I'm not trying to spam or anything. After all, nothing's for sale!

[YokohamaTommy]

I like the site!
Bookmarked.

Question:
Are the photos on the site all your own works (or royalty free?)
This is something I've hit against when creating online content myself.
It may seem innocuous now, but it may bite you in the bum later if the site becomes a hit (which I wish for you it will.)
This will be especially true if the site ever goes commercial.

Just some food for thought.

Edit:
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns.

I have it. It's quite solid.

[Nikolai926]

I'm glad you like the site!

And thanks for the heads up about the photos. Only about half of them are mine right now. I guess I'll either have to switch them out or make sure to give credits for where they came from every time.

Can't imagine the site ever going commercial, but I guess you never know.

Do you have online content that relates to Japanese? Maybe once I get more subscribers I can re-post one of your old articles and hopefully drive some traffic to your site ^_^

[candyjon2002]

I heart this! I'm now reading the ebook. omoshiroi

[liamoko]

Don't quit your day job...

[Effected After]

And thanks for the heads up about the photos. Only about half of them are mine right now. I guess I'll either have to switch them out or make sure to give credits for where they came from every time.

Giving credit doesn't remove liability, even if your site is non-commercial. You could theoretically get sued for a fair bit of money if caught using the wrong image. Or a lesser-case scenario, if the person whose image you are using reports you to your hosting company, they may dump you.

[Nikolai926]

Giving credit doesn't remove liability, even if your site is non-commercial. You could theoretically get sued for a fair bit of money if caught using the wrong image. Or a lesser-case scenario, if the person whose image you are using reports you to your hosting company, they may dump you.

Yikes! Guess that solves that then: I'll have to be very careful which photos I use. Thank you.

Don't quit your day job...

Trust me, I'm not going to! After all, the site's free

I heart this! I'm now reading the ebook. omoshiroi

Cool! Let me know if anything is unclear/if there's anything I can help with.

[Ghostlsyunny11]

Seems like a pretty cool site. Especially for people like me who want to learn Japanese but can't really find any proper references to do so.

[yooma]

I like the url of the site and the art. It's a good layout and you have populated the page in a visually interesting way. You also seem to have all of the modern social features that people have come to expect. Despite it being a well designed site, I don't think you're going to get a lot of visitors. You have entered a field that has been saturated with competition for a decade, and it doesn't look like you are trying very hard. But the content you have is just ultra-beginner material. Beginning level material is really easy to find on the internet and in bookstores, so I don't really understand why you decided to address only beginner level material. I read one of your articles in depth, the pronunciation one, and there are a lot of things that just don't make any sense to me:

1)Saying that Japanese is pretty easy to pronounce is absolutely pointless. Of course its easy, you already speak japanese. You are giving the reader no reason to trust your claim that it's easy. I think your doing this because your trying to present Japanese pronunciation as something that is not intimidating. But your not convincing. You should say something like "All of the cardinal sounds of Japanese already exist in the English sound library. So to master Japanese pronunciation all you will need to learn is how to augment the sounds you are already familiar with. After pronunciation comes accent, which is different than in English, but the Japanese accent is relatively easy to emulate for English speakers because you will be essentially timing, ordering, and intonating groups of sounds that you have already mastered."

2)I have no idea why you said Japanese is a syllable based language. There is more evidence that the mora is the fundamental timing device of Japanese. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_%2...cs%29#Japanese You cannot explain many of the features of Japanese phonology assuming the smallest timing unit is a syllable. I think your confusing mora with syllable. And then you say divide the syllables into beats? So, like, a syllable is made up of one or more beats? Or are you just using the two terms synonymously?

3)"in Japanese a word with a double vowel acutally has a different meaning in japanese". So, according to you if i pronounce /keeki/ as /keki/ (ケーキ) then I have made a mistake? what about saying /honto/ instead of /hontou/ (本当)? what you are saying is that if, in any situation where a short vowel is exchanged with a lengthened vowel (of the same vowel kind) or vice versa, then neccessarily the meaning of the word is different? You are being very ambiguous.

4)You mention that "vowels can be combined to make somewhat different sounds"? What does that mean? what different sounds? more vowels? something that isn't a vowel? You also mentioned this after you wrote down vowels like "ah", "eh". You need to mention this fact near the beginning.

5)"Since Japanese is syllabic, each consonant is always attached to a vowel sound..." wtf? im just confused. why are writing "..."? and this is another technically poor explination. a CV sequence is a mora, and the prevalence of CV sequences in Japanese reflects the moriac timing of Japanese. syllables are not the same thing. syllables are (C)V(C). i think you need to make a distinction between mora and syllable and give a better explanation by using mora.

6)"your Japanese teacher might tell you that this counts as a two-beat word." you know why a real Japanese teacher would say that? bcuz it is true, /ho/ is one mora and /n/ is another mora. two morea. i would say that it is like a silent beat, but i don't want to call it a beat. bcuz its not a beat. But why would you even say this? its like admitting your wrong? just doesn’t make any sense why you would point out that what you think is different from what most real Japanese teachers think. why would i listen to you then?

7)Japanese has semi-vowels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semivowel

Conclusion:
Your article is technically inaccurate, not even wholly consistent, and your coverage seems to be disjointed and shallow. There seem to be so much ambiguity and lack of discussion in your explanation that I think you haven't actually explained anything. A beginner will not learn anything about Japanese pronunciation from this article. It is too short and too poorly written. I can tell two things from looking at this article:
1) you have never read a book on teaching Japanese as a second language, so you are trying to teach merely from personal experience. just being able to speak japanese does not qualify you to teach it.
2)you have not considered or looked at other books that teach Japanese.
frankly, i dont see why you would bother with a website around teaching Japanese as a second language, when you have no idea how to do that and your doing a half-___ job (no audio included with your explanation of pronunciation).

My advice to fix it, is to read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology and the continue teaching japanese if and only if you understand this wikipedia page.

[Effected After]

The average person is not going to know what a mora is, but they are going to understand what a syllable is. The best way to teach people is to relate things in terms that they can understand. If you start off your beginner's tutorial with words like mora, it's just going to be intimidating.

[Trichophyton-in-my-pants]

Two yen.

I don't see how this site is related to learning Japanese, at all. It's just a blog.

There is no progression what so ever, but just unrelated blog posts about how you learned Japanese.

If you want to check how the latest of the latest free online language learning resources work, go to http://duolingo.com/

[liamoko]

Two yen.

I don't see how this site is related to learning Japanese, at all. It's just a blog.

There is no progression what so ever, but just unrelated blog posts about how you learned Japanese.

If you want to check how the latest of the latest free online language learning resources work, go to http://duolingo.com/

Agreed, the OP would be wise to closely look at this model...

However, I didn't realized(according to that site), that 2 days until the dawn of a new era.

Why am I always left in the dark about the dawning of a new era.

[yooma]

The average person is not going to know what a mora is, but they are going to understand what a syllable is. The best way to teach people is to relate things in terms that they can understand. If you start off your beginner's tutorial with words like mora, it's just going to be intimidating.

Listen, I came back to this forum bcuz I felt bad for being an アスホル to you. At least your doing something for the benefit of other people, and I deeply appreciate that. Your cause is noble, if the execution is a bit off. I was just trying to crack some eggs over your head. I was a little harsh, but I only hoped to encourage you to take a different approach. I like writing little articles and tutorials on teaching people things. I think its just a general human desire of ours to teach what we know to other people. You're not doing anything wrong, well besides misinformation, but you seem like a good interesting person, and I understand exactly why and what you are doing, and I admire that. But you have to understand, that just reflecting on your own knowledge does not enable you to teach a language. For science and math you can do that, but language is different.

You are totally underestimating your readership. People who seek resources are seeking intellectual material to study, are they the not? Your readership wants to learn something, give them something to learn. If they couldn't handle a mora, they wouldn't be reading that guide. The mora is a very easy concept to understand. And you are in an advantageous position, bcuz, just as you too assume, many second language education publishers assume the mora is too much detail at first. You can distinguish yourself and your work by teaching your readership things that couldn't be found in other similarly topiced material. Trust me I've taken years of classes throughout high school and university on Japanese. I know your target demographic, you're underestimating them and boring them. You need to view concepts like the mora as a conceptual asset in your pedagogy.

How about this, let me help you rewrite it, or write a sister article on Japanese pronunciation. I guarantee what I write will attract a lot of google hits and you will get traffic. I know how to educate beginners on technical things through proper pacing and motivation. I can make it interesting. Just let me post it on your website, under my name (which would be good for your site anyways) as a co-colmunist, and I think you will get page views on your articles from visitors who first came to what I would write. Don't have to endorse it, just put my article on your website (if you like it), and see if it results in page views to your other articles. I have good sound files you can upload and lots of examples. It would, however, take me a couple weeks to write it and it would be considerably longer then any of your articles. I know a lot of resources and we can write a "links" page with links to those resources to attract even more people. What do you say?

[Effected After]

I've never even looked at the site. I was just commenting on your post.

[Genkii]

Don't quit your day job...

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