August 2, 2023

1950s self study textbook

Another textbook from my "how they used to have to learn Japanese" collection, this was first published in 1954. As was normal for a textbook of that time, it is entirely in romaji. It spends a fair amount of lesson one trying to teach you pronunciation. Interestingly, the author wrote this with the self studying individual student in mind, though he does recommend that you "hire a native tutor", ideally "one who hesitates to speak English" and a "talkative person who is not too highly educated"...

The Japanese taught in this book is probably old fashioned in some areas -- the most prominent of which is its use of watakushi as the standard first person pronoun.

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