I know one of the reasons why people left Duolingo, they did not want to learn textbook japanese, but japanese that japanese people use in life. For example, when somebody ask your name, you don't need to say "わたし は name です" but simple "name です".
I want to ask, if I study with reshuu, will end up this type of textbook japanese user or learn the natural japanese?
Or is it that everybody has to become textbook japanese user to later learn the japanese that is normally used?
I'm going to be honest and disagree. First, don't use duolingo because since they replaced people with some crummy LLM, what they teach is demonstrably wrong at times.
As far as renshuu is concerned, one issue is that sentences have various levels of casualness, from proper to near middle-school speak. And there is no indicator of casualness. So if you don't know anything else, how can you tell?
You don't need to learn "textbook" Japanese before learning day-to-day Japanese, you learn both together.
And books do teach Japanese that people use. The 私はnameです thing is going to be lesson 1. By lesson 2, the book will say that the topic is optional if it is obvious from the context. Any decent book will also teach other forms of speech, not just teineigo. Sure some people will sound robotic if they only used textbooks, but that's on them. They should have used other sources as well, like movies, TV shows, and so on.
In my opinion, renshuu is for practice like the name suggests. To hammer it into your brain.
I'm not sure what "textbook" Japanese - the majority of textbooks I've seen do a good job of teaching accurate, natural Japanese.
I think what you're confusing is formality levels. I think what you're referring to as "Textbook" is rather your standard, polite Japanese, which *is* used extensively. If you are going to 100% natural Japanese, saying "name です" in all situations (or even "most") is going to sound off.
Instead, what most textbooks (and renshuu does as well) is to teach you the standard Japanese that you are expected to know and use, and then start to distance itself away from that as you learn more casual forms.
It's my humble opinion that it is *much* easier to learn the full forms first, then learn what can be dropped (and in what situations), instead of learning it the other way around.
Ultimately, if you want to fit in, you need to grasp Japanese at multiple politeness levels. There is not, for example, a casual level of Japanese that you can stick to because (I am not saying you feel this way, but this has been brought up to me many times over the years) "I have a friendly and casual personality". Casual/polite/humble are not states of mind or personality traits, they're tools in the language that you need to have mastery over, as they will *all* be used depending on the situation :)
I'd also point out that renshuu's name was chosen close to 20 years ago, way before we had anything even remotely resembling lessons (and grammar in the system did not exist at all). We definitely aim to teach a large chunk of the language now, and based on the feedback I get from users, many do feel they are learning here, and not just practicing.
Practice may have been too reductive. I meant repetitive learning. That and texbooks is great for self study because, let's face it, no one has the self-motivation to actually do the exercises in the texbook consistently. On the other hand, a textbook does present scenarios and conversations that help a lot. Especially up to intermediate level. After that you sort of run out of textbooks, but know enough to start reading real material.
From renshuu alone, I have learnt a heap of things. With your question regarding to textbook Japanese (I assume formal Japanese) and natural Japanese (I assume referring to casual form) you can do both. Some schedules such as the Genki ones have formal while renshuu JLPT will have casual. You can also create your own schedule to decide which verb form such as て or ます form you want to manually add in.
All these are the many reasons I personally hated Duolingo. Japanese or not, it has taught me literally nothing. Lost all sanity with it. Also hate AI. Every 10 mins will force you to pay for super. Sure, you might pick up one thing but that's it. All I learnt were random words in sentences that no one would say. (Like my 4 year old brother is a doctor)
Capaska (07月22日, 5:30)
I know one of the reasons why people left Duolingo, they did not want to learn textbook japanese, but japanese that japanese people use in life.
Duolingo's problem isn't "textbook Japanese", it's the grammatical (usually), but contextually unnatural examples (confirmed by many native speakers), as well as the dreadfully inaccurate AI/TTS audio that frequently butchers pitch accent and occasionally uses the wrong readings for certain characters (e.g. saying たい for 体 when it was meant to be からだ).
Not that I have a problem with people using Duolingo, I think it does a decent job at keeping beginners engaged enough to get them through the initial stages of language learning.
PS: To me language learning platforms and textbooks are designed to give you a solid foundation. Learning different styles and what's "natural" in what context/situations is something you pick up from prolonged exposure to the language :)
What I learned from "That Japanese Man Yuta", that textbook japanese is japanese, that is not used that much or sound weird for japanese person. Like if you used the word the way, that is mostly not used.
This is one example of he's videos where he explain the difference. I would be happy if somebody explain to me, how much value this actually have or if he is not right. I believe him, because he is japanese and who know better then japanese right?
I think "textbook Japanese" is a kind of unavoidable part of properly studying grammar, with sentences constructed to demonstrate and teach grammar points. Even if it's not always representative of how native speakers will often drop and omit things, understanding the textbook forms first will make it a lot easier to understand the harder slang later.
Just make sure that you're supplementing lessons here with immersing in content made by and for native speakers.
He's not saying textbooks don't teach natural Japanese, but that native Japanese speak a much more complex Japanese, which is obvious. That's like saying "let me show you this first-grade arithmetic homework, now let me show you Perelman's proof of the Poincare conjecture. It looks nothing like it!" It's a ridiculous comparison.
Obviously you won't be able to speak like a native as a beginner. You have to start simple and improve from there. Native Japanese have had 2 decades to learn the language, with full immersion, and a lot of time dedicated to it. Not to mention a very maleable brain as infants with nothing else to do but listen to their parents. Learning a language as an adult is different.
"Textbook Japanese" doesn't really say anything, also because it happens with every language. Languages aren't one whole thing, but rather a collection of dialects. And especially with Japanese, because your whole way of speaking changes depending on the listener, textbooks try to use the most standard or neutral way of speaking. And while this is not always right, it's really hard for them to project what is correct. To achieve that you need further immersion. Textbooks do the best they can to help you learn the language, but to become fluent you would have to be able to talk to natives, or at least many many practice sessions. So yes, renshuu may teach textbook Japanese, but you need that. You can't just begin learning a language with the most complex sentence structures. Like others in this thread have said, you have to start somewhere and make your way up the "language ladder".
