I'm here at the third edition of the
Yankee textbook and I'm dying to find
out if it's better than the original so
let's open it up and find out together
so my first impression of the new book
is that it's made of cheaper material
but with that said the pages are much
easier to read they're wider maybe a
little bit better paper I'm not sure the
original was sort of round and I wasn't
a big fan of that the cover is a little
bit more flimsy but I don't think
anyone's too worried about that the
design is also I don't know it looks
older it doesn't look as modern as the
original but that's a personal
preference I imagine so let's go ahead
and see the differences inside so the
first thing I noticed is that in Genki 1
the inside is generally black and white
in the second edition well as in the 3rd
edition it's usually in a red black and
white or an orange black and white I
suppose from the introduction itself
seems to be better written there's more
examples and it just seems to be a
little bit easier to follow even though
a lot of the information is the same
there's also an introduction of the
characters right at the beginning which
we do not have in book 2 moving in to
the first introduction lesson we see
that a lot of the pictures are exactly
the same but they're laid out in a
little bit more pleasing way to the eye
but they're all pretty much exactly the
same the pictures the dialogue
everything it's nice to have the
vocabulary over here in the next page it
just seems to be a cleaner setup also
you'll notice that while the content is
mostly the same it's been moved around
just to be a little bit more clean
though the feeling I've gotten from this
book so far is that they've just tried
to clean up not only the design but a
lot of the language as well which we'll
see a little bit later you'll notice
that some of the practice questions are
pushed over on to the next page in this
book and we're actually we have one less
so there's less exercises but there's
also class activities which is really
nice
for teachers and for if you're doing
group learning they've also introduced
numbers in the first introduction as
opposed to later in less than once
moving on to lesson one it's the same
exact title I think the same exact
characters but you will notice that the
dialogue is different in the first book
our first set of dialog is sumimasen
i'ma Nanji desu ka' Junichi Hondas
arigatou gozaimasu
then in the new book we have cognitive a
Kimura Takeshi is very hard to this I
know you gotta say this car new engine
this so this car
none in say this car yone in say this so
you can see already that we're going
into a lot more detail in the dialogues
and there's just more of it and I
personally think it's quite a bit better
than in the original moving on we have a
lot of the same vocabulary it's
organized in a better way and the
original we had just the basic
vocabulary then we had countries majors
occupations family we still have
countries majors occupations and on this
page we have family but the original
vocabulary is also organized we have
school of words person words time words
others and it's just organized in a way
so that it's easier to figure out where
you should focus it and learn so I'm a
big fan of that I like it if we go right
onto the first page in the first lesson
you will notice that the language is
simplified it's cutting out a lot of
unnecessary wordy things that were in
the original Genki that actually made it
much more confusing than it needed to be
while a lot of the example sentences are
the same though some of them are
reorganized so for example we have
shorter sentences here doc say this
nihongo this Junichi hun this in this
one no longer sentence was first which i
think is kind of a smart decision to
make you'll also notice we generally
have more sentences or at least they're
grouped into one area as opposed to
being spread out among paragraphs trying
to explain what they mean so the next
thing i noticed is that the sections are
all exactly the same we've got if you go
back to page one we've got XY this
section one XY this question sentences
question sentences noun no known number
three now no known and that's the end of
chapter one and all of the chapters are
the same if you're taking Genki one in a
class and you have book two assigned you
can still get book three and be able to
follow along because all the sections
are the same with that said some of the
examples and the practice is a little
bit different so if you're getting
homework from the book as opposed to the
workbook you may need to have book two
so as an example of simplified english
that i'm
just a big fan of the greatly simplified
or rather improved the writing English
writing in the new Yankee book here's an
example the original introduction
sentences for questions ends is the
second section of chat lesson one is it
is very easy to form questions in
Japanese
basically all you need to do is at kah
at the end of a statement here's the new
sentence you can just add Chi at the end
of a statement and turn it into a
question straight to the point
easy to understand it's great there's
just too much wordiness in here that is
unnecessary that cut it all out maybe a
simple statement sentence I love it
there's lots of that in this book just
for that alone I mean if you have a
choice if you're buying one or the other
now get the new one it's easier to
understand if we go to the end of the
section you'll notice that we've got our
culture notes the culture notes are
still almost identical I didn't notice
any differences just maybe their
placement is slightly different we've
also got our expression notes I found
that they are shorter they've cut a lot
out I think there was probably too much
information in there before some of it I
thought was really good information but
I don't think it's a bad thing that
they've cut down on it there was just
too much information in each chapter
there still is too much information in
some of the chapters but sort of cutting
back on this maybe they put it later in
the book I didn't find it yet I think
that was a good decision moving on to
the exercises you'll notice from page
one right away that there's differences
the sentences are better in this case
that's just completely different but
don't worry
we've got the same exercises later in
the chapter they're exactly the same I
think some of the sentences that we're
using here and some of the example
tables are simplified greatly so you'll
notice we've got the same people here
we've got Mary and Tucker she or
whatever but we've cut out some of the
information so it's just not so
overwhelming this will be good for
classwork for homework it's better the
sentences I think have been improved a
bit simplified in some situations
lengthened in others to help you have
better Japanese that you can actually
use with that said it's time to jump
over to Chapter three
so one of the main things I wanted to
know about Genki third edition is is
chapter three better than
second edition chapter three is
literally one of the worst sections I've
ever read in any Japanese textbook ever
it's on the first conjugation the polite
mas form in Japanese and in book 2 it's
horrendous it's actually the reason I
started teaching from Genki because it's
so bad and so many people use it that I
felt like someone should explain it a
little better with the new edition I was
hoping they would have made some some
updates to it so let's check that out
looking at it we can see that in the
original there's these big block
paragraphs and they're all terrible
they're almost impossible to understand
if we look over here in the new book we
can already see that there's less
explanation paragraphs this is good news
the better news is that they're also
simpler just like a lot of the English
in the rest of the book and much easier
to understand let's just go over the
first sentence here's a nice long
sentence that's hard to understand we've
got in this lesson we learned about the
dictionary forms the present tense
affirmative forms when the present tense
negative forms finished right in this
one we have verbs in Japanese conjugate
or take various shapes in this lesson we
learned three forms the dictionary form
the present tense burden forms and the
present tense negative forms there are
two kinds of verbs that follow regular
conjugation patterns and an example of
each below so there's just there's just
a lot of unnecessary information there
they're cutting it out with that said
they're still using the do ooh an
irregular verb pattern so do verbs who
verbs irregular verbs
I still hate that I still consider these
two verbs and you in ed reverbs or
better yet go down verbs and Ichi Dan
verbs it's easier to understand that way
because it gets really confusing when
you call these two verbs but there's
actually two verbs included now these
the new verbs are not included in the
Dru verbs because they're actually e to
and Ed new verbs now you don't have to
worry about that now if you want to
learn more about that I did a stream all
about lesson 3 that explained it very
clearly there's a link right over here
it's still way easier to understand in
here then it was in the original book so
I think people will have a lot less
trouble learning it just from the book
with that said I still think the drew
ooh a regular verb decision will make
people make a lot of mistakes and I
still think I'll have to teach it in my
upcoming streams again just so that
people aren't too confused about
because I'm sorry it is confusing I just
think it is a higher quality book
I think there's new vocabulary that's a
little bit more modern main thing I was
worried about was chapter 3 I think if
chapter 3 is better and it is it's worth
getting the third edition jumping to the
back of the book where's where we learn
about kanji and hiragana and whatnot the
very first thing I noticed is that when
we hit our first page we've got
questions about heeta gonna in practice
but there is no heater got a chart
there's no where they teach it of course
in the front of the book we have the
heater gonna but I'm telling you it's
way easier to have it right here when
I'm about to learn it right in front of
me than it is to have to turn back to
the front of the book every time I want
to look up Akita gonna so that's great
it's just a little change and I think
it's an important one and it shows that
they were really trying to make as many
little improvements as they could mr.
Edition the exercises are all pretty
much the same pictures are all pretty
much the same but some of the sentences
there's some extra stuff I think it's
better organized so we've got the same
thing with katakana here there's there's
no chart here we've got the chart so
just it's better moving on to the kanji
lessons now you will notice that there
is no real changes obviously beyond the
color everything is exactly the same
it's the same kanji the same examples
the same format so no updates there one
last thing to mention is that there is
no CD in the new edition but you can
download all of the sounds from the
altona V app from The Japan Times so you
can still get all the sound but in a
more modern way on your cell phone or
probably on a website as well there's
also no advertisement for the other apps
that Genki has but I've heard great
things about the Genki vocab cards kanji
cards and conjugation cards on my
discord check out my discord if you
haven't already because we talked about
a lot of things about Genki and about
japanese learning in general such things
as good apps for learning japanese so
make sure you get the Genki conjugation
cards if you're having trouble with
conjugation during Genki
so I've already streamed the entirety of
the second edition of Genki but because
there's been so many changes and because
I actually came up with a new format
back in lesson 10 of the second edition
I'm gonna be starting over fresh with
the third edition and streaming it live
here on YouTube from
week or two from now so please subscribe
if you haven't already and hit the bell
so you know when I go live so that's it
that's my before you buy review of the
Genki textbook what do you guys think do
you think that the third edition is
better than the second edition you've
already got it or if you're just
watching this are you gonna pick up the
third edition if so there's a link down
in the description just in case it's
your first time here my name's Andy I
teach and stream lessons from Genki as
well as create other grammar lessons and
things like that I do comedy and many
other things here I'm talking you Andy
so if you want to get more of that why
don't you continue watching right here
and if you want to keep learning more
Japanese with me and my friends here in
token yen you won't use the subscribe
button right over here and I'll see you
next time
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