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FSI Japanese?

Printed From: FSI Language Courses
Category: Learning Languages
Forum Name: General Discussion
Forum Discription: Discussion about studying languages using the FSI courses. If you would like to see a specific language forum not listed below, just let us know.
URL: http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=87
Printed Date: 16 January 2009 at 3:12am


Topic: FSI Japanese?
Posted By: CantoKid
Subject: FSI Japanese?
Date Posted: 01 August 2006 at 3:47am
Was there ever an FSI course for Japanese?



Replies:
Posted By: DemiPuppet
Date Posted: 13 August 2006 at 10:35pm
As far as I can tell, there never was a Japanese Basic Course.  It looks like the FSI just used Eleanor Harz Jorden's  "Beginning Japanese" book. I'm not sure, but the FSI may have produced the audio tapes.

I was browsing through my university library and noticed that the FSI did produce a "Japanese FAST" book. But like all the FSI FAST books, it did not look very comprehensive.


Posted By: RavinDave
Date Posted: 08 January 2007 at 9:17am
What do you make of http://cgi.ebay.com/Japanese-The-Official-Foreign-Service-Institute-Course_W0QQitemZ140071568890QQihZ004QQcategoryZ29792QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem - of these tapes being sold on eBay?




Posted By: Chung
Date Posted: 08 January 2007 at 9:41am
Are these originals directly from FSI? Or are they from Multilingua Inc.?


Posted By: onebir
Date Posted: 08 January 2007 at 12:54pm
Originally posted by DemiPuppet

As far as I can tell, there never was a Japanese Basic Course.  It looks like the FSI just used Eleanor Harz Jorden's  "Beginning Japanese" book. I'm not sure, but the FSI may have produced the audio tapes.


I'm confused about this too.  It thought that NTIS only sold US government produced materials.  But here's a chunk of its mission statement:

"NTIS' Responsibilities
  • Facilitate public access to Federal information
  • ...
  • Maintain a permanent repository of unclassified scientific, technical, engineering, and business information"
http://www.ntis.gov/about/overview.asp?loc=6-1-0 - http://www.ntis.gov/about/overview.asp?loc=6-1-0

The second bullet seems to mandate them to sell copyright materials too.

On the other hand there are 'true' copyright materials based on FSI stuff (usually modified by the course developers at a later date) and Jorden did work for the FSI 'for many years', according to her Wikipedia entry:
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Jorden - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Jorden )


So maybe the 'Beginning Japanese' sold by NTIS (link below) is a government-funded, public domain version of the Eleanor Hartz Jordan, which she later modified into the Yale version...

( http://www.ntis.gov/search/results.asp?loc=3-0-0&strSearch=ntisavlanguagejapanese&formShow=no - http://www.ntis.gov/search/results.asp?loc=3-0-0&strSearch=ntisavlanguagejapanese&formShow=no)

Perhaps the NTIS could answer the question?

EDIT: I think the existence of a Barron's Mastering Japanese, crediting the FSI + the same authors (Eleanor Harz Jorden, and Hamako Ito Chaplin) supports the theory that the NTIS beginning Japanese is public domain...

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Japanese-Foreign-Language-Institute/dp/0812078659/sr=1-11/qid=1168283230/ref=sr_1_11/102-4853311-8496108?ie=UTF8&s=books - http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Japanese-Foreign-Language-Institute/dp/0812078659/sr=1-11/qid=1168283230/ref=sr_1_11/102-4853311-8496108?ie=UTF8&s=books



Posted By: CantoKid
Date Posted: 01 February 2007 at 1:56am
Very interesting, it looks like we may have to try and get a hold of this course as well! Cool!


Posted By: CharlieBrown
Date Posted: 05 February 2007 at 3:27am
I would love to have a Japanese section!


Posted By: emptysilo
Date Posted: 06 February 2007 at 6:16pm
Actually, the book that comes with the Barron's course is the exact same book (1963 copyright) that is published by Yale University Press (I bought both without knowing it at the time). If you order the Beginning Japanese tapes, the same several (8 tapes come with part 1) of the first ones are the same. So, I don't think it is in the public domain. But I don't know.

This is the first of three parts by the way. Part 1 then Part 2 then Reading Japanese. You can order all the tapes (217$ for Beginning-15+16 tapes, 117$ for Reading) through Cornell now, instead of whatever company is mentioned in the book. I am guessing there are 15 tapes for Part 1 covers the same for Barron's so it is cheaper to get the tapes from Barron's since Cornell's price for just the tapes for Part 1 is 105$ (Part 2 = 112$). I don't know if there is a cheaper price to get it from then perhaps a friend.

Hopes this helps, ES.


Posted By: beanie
Date Posted: 10 May 2007 at 1:20am
I believe "Reading Japanese" from 1976 by Eleanor Harz Jorden has a notice in it that released it to the public domain in 1991.


Posted By: overrated
Date Posted: 30 May 2007 at 10:09am
Can anyone do anything about this?


Posted By: Poetry
Date Posted: 07 July 2007 at 1:46am
Originally posted by beanie

I believe "Reading Japanese" from 1976 by Eleanor Harz Jorden has a notice in it that released it to the public domain in 1991.
 
That one is in our library according to the catalog lookup.  I can pull it in a few days and check. 
 
--Poetry


Posted By: CantoKid
Date Posted: 09 July 2007 at 9:06pm
I still hope we can get the audio for the Japanese course onto this site. I think it will be awesome!


Posted By: brian00321
Date Posted: 12 July 2007 at 7:54pm
Originally posted by CantoKid

I still hope we can get the audio for the Japanese course onto this site. I think it will be awesome!


I'm pretty sure that Elanor Jorden still has copyright on the books/audio. I lost hope in waiting for it to show up on public domain so I went ahead and bought it (both levels). LOL But yeah, it'd be nice if this course (Beginning Japanese/FSI) could be put in public domain.


Posted By: Cinzia
Date Posted: 15 December 2007 at 2:30pm
The audio companion to Jorden's text, Japanese the Spoken Language, can be accessed without login at Ohio State University's Language Lab.

http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/index.php?id=1672


Posted By: eurasia
Date Posted: 16 December 2007 at 10:15am
Forget Jorden's Beginning Japanese. 
 
Instead get her Japanese the Spoken Language in 3 volumes.  It is far superior in every way - no comparison.  The author even says in the introduction to Japanese the Spoken Language that Beginning Japanese was showing its age and needed to be replaced. 
 
If you really want to learn the language and gain some insights into the way Japanese think in their language then get the Spoken Language and forget Beginning Japanese.
 
Jorden has really given some thought to a good way to present the structures of Japanese in a logical, building block method  - most explanations are very clear although a bit excessive on the linguistic theory at times. 
 
And the great thing about the Spoken Language, the audio is free - from Ohio State University - go to
 
http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/index.php?id=1673 - http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/index.php?id=1673
 
I haven't listen to all these files from OSU - I had cassette tapes and just happened to discover the OSU website.  The cassette tapes were of two versions.  The first 12 lessons were redone about 10 years after the first recording and were excellent.  The rest were never redone and the quality on the cassettes sold by Cheng & Tsui was horrible.  At times it sounded as if the Japanese were speaking through a cloth - sound levels uneven, etc.  I complained to the President of Cheng & Tsui and she called me and explained that they were given poor masters to use by the source and said she would stop selling them.  The OSU files I have listened to indicate a much better quality though still highly uneven in the lessons from 13 on.  Usuable - and they ARE free.  Just a disappointment after the excellence of the first 12 lessons - at least on cassette.
 
 


Posted By: LTJG X
Date Posted: 16 January 2008 at 5:27am
Originally posted by emptysilo

Actually, the book that comes with the Barron's course is the exact same book (1963 copyright) that is published by Yale University Press (I bought both without knowing it at the time). If you order the Beginning Japanese tapes, the same several (8 tapes come with part 1) of the first ones are the same. So, I don't think it is in the public domain. But I don't know.

This is the first of three parts by the way. Part 1 then Part 2 then Reading Japanese. You can order all the tapes (217$ for Beginning-15+16 tapes, 117$ for Reading) through Cornell now, instead of whatever company is mentioned in the book. I am guessing there are 15 tapes for Part 1 covers the same for Barron's so it is cheaper to get the tapes from Barron's since Cornell's price for just the tapes for Part 1 is 105$ (Part 2 = 112$). I don't know if there is a cheaper price to get it from then perhaps a friend.

Hopes this helps, ES.


Do you have a link to where you purchased the programs?  I tried looking around the Cornell University online bookstore, but all I could find were the textbooks only, no audio-cassettes.  I had purchased all three from Multilingual books, but the audio quality was pretty atrocious (they were apparently outsourced from a company called Audioforum.)

NTIS sells Beginning Japanese I & II, but it's over $400.  They don't sell Reading Japanese.

I've since downloaded the Japanese: The Spoken Language .mp3s from the OSU language lab-- no complaints other than having to download something like 500 files (seriously, they could have split the lessons into 10-20 minute pieces instead of only 50 seconds each for some of the smaller ones.)


-------------
I'se born on the crest of a wave 'n rocked in the cradle o'the deep. Every tooth in me head is a marlinspike, the hair on me head is hemp. Every bone in me body is a spar 'n when I spits, I spits tar!


Posted By: Grimagon
Date Posted: 24 February 2008 at 5:16pm
And the great thing about the Spoken Language, the audio is free - from Ohio State University - go to
 
http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/index.php?id=1673 - http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/index.php?id=1673


Thanks for posting, have been looking for some Japanese texts and audio for a while. Will check this course out :)


-------------
http://esljobs.biz - The best way to learn a language is immersion - Teach English Overseas


Posted By: mspxlation
Date Posted: 30 May 2008 at 3:15pm
Japanese is a great language, but do NOT use Jorden's Beginning Japanese or anything based on it.

The pedagogical concept is sound, but note the copyright date: 1963. I learned out of it--in a program directed by Eleanor Jorden herself, no less--but when I arrived in Japan in 1977, the language presented was already noticeably outdated. Even some of the situations depicted are outdated, most notably the one in which someone has to turn out the lights before watching TV (because the wiring in Japanese homes at the time couldn't take having too many electrical appliances running at once).

Anyway, Japanese the Spoken Language has its good points and bad points.

The good points are very natural use of language. By the time you get to the second and third books, you're learning dialogues that make native speakers ask, "Did they eavesdrop on actual people's conversations?"

This book also does the best job of explaining when to use keigo (polite language).

The listening exercises are great, spoken at normal speed, which is surprisingly unusual for Japanese textbooks.

Now for the bad points. A lot of people don't like the fact that it's written in romaji all the way through. Personally, I think that the second and third books, at least, could have been written in Japanese script with furigana.

The grammar explanations, while complete, are written in a somewhat technical style that some may find hard to understand.

Finally, the vocabulary is kept excessively small.

Japanese the Written Language is good, based on the excellent pedagogical principles that made Reading Japanese the best book ever for teaching kanji. (Most books on learning kanji assume that you can learn them just by writing them a few times.)

Other books that I know of that are good for basic Japanese are Situational Functional Japanese, designed to get new residents of Japan handling real-life situations as fast as possible (when I was teaching, my students liked it a lot), and, if you have an instructor or tutor who is good at direct method, Bunka Shokyuu Nihongo, which is fun for its illustrations. (My students liked that one, too, but it requires a LOT of work on the part of the instructor.)



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