Japanese From Zero! 4: Proven Techniques to Learn Japanese for Students and Professionals (Japanese Edition)

This entire series of books has been invaluable in my goal of learning Japanese despite having little interaction with native speakers of the language. Its greatest strength is the many, many examples of sentences for each grammatical point. Sure, one can memorize rules, but you need examples on top of examples to get a feel for the language, especially on things like the ga/wa distinction and sentence-ending particles, which are second nature to someone for whom Japanese is their first language but are tough for English speakers because our language has no equivalents. Repetition and examples are also plentiful for the kanji characters -- by the end of this book you will be able to write 160 kanji and should recognize quite a few more when used in common words. The only caveat I have, which gets worse as you go along in the series and the grammar gets more sophisticated, is that it doesn't explain the logic underlying grammar rules. It took me a long time to realize that the fact some verbs could take an object with a "wo" particle while others only the subject "ga" particle or a target with the "ni" particle was not arbitrary but based on whether the verb was transitive or intransitive (there seem to be are a lot more of the latter in Japanese than in English). These books don't even use the term intransitive if I recall correctly. Similarly, the student would be better served if the book used more literal translations, like in Tae Kim's guide. Getting from the Japanese sentence to the English translation shown in the book can be a head-scratcher sometimes. This is particularly true, and this has become more of a problem in book 4, where the sentence requires understanding a grammar point that the series hasn't covered yet! For example, many Japanese particles do double-, triple -, quadruple duty, meaning different things in different clauses or in combination with other particles. Sometimes a sentence in the book, though, will use a particle you've learned but in a way you haven't learned. Many times I've had to consult the book Essential Japanese Grammar to figure out something that this book is neglecting to tell me. Without another grammar book (and a dictionary) I suspect I would be quite frustrated at times. A grammar reference book is also needed because the format of this book, which is meant to be user-friendly to a student (a younger person than me, I'm assuming), makes it inconvenient as a reference work. Despite all this carping, I can't give it less than 5 stars, simply because the sheer volume of material presented at a nice pace makes this series the primary resource for a beginner like myself.

Japanese from Zero 3 primarily focused on trying to introduce the reader to Kanji as well as how to make slightly less basic sentences with more involved grammar. Japanese from Zero 4 continues your study of kanji while teaching how to make slightly longer, connected and more intricate sentences with actual grammatical structures to learn. After using this book, it will push you close enough into the slightly lower intermediate stage of understanding Japanese. After finishing this book, you will be able to obviously move on to Japanese from Zero 5 or begin to engage with some basic native materials with the help of aids such as a dictionary. Like many have said, the kanji is taught at a snails pace compared to other books, but I believe the author did this with the intention of prioritizing quality over quantity. This book series is clearly meant to be a more accessible and down-to-earth book for learning Japanese and it is an unfortunate fact that dumping a lot kanji to study every chapter will just frustrate and intimidate the average learner. Instead, he teaches the essential kanji and explains a lot of their quirks to teach the reader that kanji is more of a further help than a barrier to understanding Japanese. The reader can then study kanji from other materials more confidently if they need to. Overall, I think this is a great progression from Japanese from Zero 4 and definitely gives the skills needed for Japanese from Zero 5 as well.

I have been studying from the Japanese from book series for about 3 years now. I’m on chapter 8 of book 4 and I can say wholeheartedly that this book series has truly taught me the fundamentals of Japanese and even practical grammar. George trombley and his wife really help to explain Japanese in a way that no other textbooks have done (in my opinion) . I am excited to finish this book and move onto book 5 by the summer of 2022! I highly recommend pairing this with the Kanji from zero book series. It never hurts to practice and instill the knowledge you have learned from prior books as well. I find it’s a great counter-method to remembering kanji you’ve learned from book 3 and up. The video series helps as well to instill information from previous lessons as well. Thank you so much for making Japanese a fun and exciting language to learn!

Japanese From Zero book 4 continues the series with all of the elements that I loved in the previous books. The lessons read as if the author is sitting there next to you having a chat about how to speak Japanese. The explanations are very easy to understand as they don't use fancy academic terms that require you to have a Masters Degree in Linguistics to understand. The book includes lessons to learn kanji. Each kanji it teaches you not just what the kanji means, but also how to read it, how to properly write it, gives you several words that uses that kanji, and has space to practice writing the kanji.

the book progresses a lot slower than Genki or Minna no Nihongo which is not a bad thing, just a different style, learning a language (esp. one as hard as Japanese) does require a ton of repetition so I found this helpful, I've gone through Genki 1 and 2 and Minna no Nihongo so this book was mostly a review for me but I definitely found it very helpful. I will be buying book 5 as soon as it comes out. another great feature is that the author is striving to make a youtube series that goes over the lessons (currently in progress). this will be a great resource. minor criticisms: many of the kanji readings offered as examples seem too high-level to be useful for a learner at this stage (example: 'satellite broadcasting' or 'railway crossing'). this probably has to do with the fact that it's hard to come up with examples of each reading that are useful for everyday Japanese... I would lean toward not including these examples, if a given reading does not appear in everyday vocabulary maybe leave it out since it won't be important for a beginner anyway. but it's an author choice also, the pace at which furigana are dropped could be faster. all in all a very enjoyable book and no doubt worth it for the $9.99 (kindle)

This is an outstanding book for learning Japanese. I have been studying Japanese at a language school in Japan for over a year and I bought this book as a review. Well, I was very surprised because I learned more from this one book than so many previous textbooks. For one, Japanese From Zero is written by a native English speaker who is fluent in Japanese. He truly understands how to teach Japanese to an English speaker. The author points out so many little (but important) points in learning Japanese that are usually missed by native Japanese speakers. He provides easy explanations and examples for the use of particles. And all examples are both Romaji and Hiragana/Kanji. I highly recommend this book for English speakers who are studying Japanese.

I love George at yesjapan.com he is funny as hell and has some great information in the videos. Personally I found these books to be more towards what I would consider a cram session. Nothing against people who enjoy this type of learning, but I guess it just really takes a lot of focus for me to get prepared to go through it. I've instead been using nihongomaster.com and it's awesome. But I would highly suggest using both, as I've found certain places teach certain ways to learn Japanese and you will want to experience a few different sources to find out what works best in the beginning. Then it becomes a lot easier to merge into other peoples work... like for me Japanese From Zero is starting to be a little bit more exciting after nihongomaster

This book really makes you take a step forward in the right direction but It really lacks on kanji. there are occasions where you were supposed to see the kanji but they write it down on hiragana. Other times you saw a kanji without furigana that they teach you once in book 3 but you never used nor see again till that point. While I understand that it takes the route of teaching us the same they teach a Japanese student in japan, we don't have the same vocabulary as them so teaching us something we haven't used and that we won't use again in the book seems pointless. Aside from that I'm happy with it, you should always have different sources of study so, in this case, consider looking for one that covers kanji. Some use Waninaki, others use textbooks, you may as well try kanji from zero. I use an app though.

Es más grande de lo que imaginaba, y vino en perfecto estado

Took me almost 2 years to finish the fourth one finally but after doing it, I can say with certainty that the book is really good just like the previous 3. The most glaring issue would probably the very repetitive exercises, especially with the translation one which I had personally felt unnecessary and skipped it and the huge amount of typos.

Studio giapponese da autodidatta da un paio di anni ormai, ho provato diversi libri (italiani e non) e stavo quasi per mollare perché non riuscivo ad apprendere bene i concetti, trovavo le spiegazioni molto complicate e incomplete e mi stavo scoraggiando, quando un giorno per caso ho trovato il primo volume di questo libro. Ho deciso di acquistarlo e dargli una possibilità e devo dire che sono felice di averlo fatto perché questo libro è assolutamente il migliore su cui io abbia mai studiato. Se non lo avessi acquistato probabilmente ora avrei mollato questa passione per la lingua giapponese. Nonostante sia in inglese è comprensibilissimo e le spiegazioni sono fatte molto bene, a differenza di molti altri libri di testo che spiegano le cose in modo un po' approssimativo lasciando mille dubbi allo studente. L'ho trovato talmente prezioso che ho acquistato tutti i volumi di questa serie e se state iniziando a studiare questa lingua partendo davvero da zero ve lo consiglio vivamente! L'ho trovato interessante, piacevole e ricco di nozioni.

This is a great book for learning Japanese. I downloaded this book on Amazon Japan. This did not work on my US IPAD. I had to download the books again on Amazon USA.

Interesante y fácil de entender.