Product Description

Basic Connections provides basic information about expressions and usages that facilitate the flow of ideas and thoughts in written and spoken Japanese. It explains how words and phrases dovetail, how clauses pair up with other clauses, how sentences come together to create harmonious paragraphs. Since this is a book about the basics it starts with the fundamentals, explaining first the two types of Japanese sentence--"A is B" and "A does B." Then it proceeds to the problem of the modifier and the modified--a matter of "which is which." Wa and ga naturally get considerable play; after all, it is downright impossible to speak properly without them. There is also a discussion of linking nouns and noun phrases, not to speak of verbs and verb phrases. The book goes on to devote a whole chapter to common mistakes and troublesome usages. The final chapter attempts to pin down some particularly slippery locutions: such as toshite, imada ni, sore kara, whoppers like "Sentence A-te sae inakereba, Sentence B," and many more.

Any beginning or intermediate student, having spent a certain amount of time and energy studying this book, will be able to speak and read Japanese in a much more coherent fashion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59051 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9784770028600
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From the Author
Preface

The purpose of this book is to provide helpful information about Japanese expressions and usages that facilitate the flow of ideas and thought in written and spoken Japanese.

During my thirty-year teaching career, I have seen a great variety of mistakes, many of which were the result of cultural differences or differences in the way that second-language learners and native speakers of Japanese conceptualize language. The book attempts to help students become aware of these differences in conceptualization and to provide them with the linguistic tools to overcome these differences, thereby allowing their ideas to flow more naturally. The book focuses on those grammatical items, idiomatic expressions, and set phrases that have proven to be the most problematic to my students.

The patterns are presented with examples, and tips are provided throughout the text to highlight particularly important points. A few exercises are also included to allow students an opportunity to experiment with what they have learned.

Note that F refers to patterns that are predominantly feminine and M to those predominantly masculine.

I would like to thank the Center of Japanese Studies at the University of Hawai'i for the Japanese Studies Summer Grant (1994) which supported this project. I would also like to thank Greg Nishihara and Sarina Chugani for their hours of computer work and to express appreciation to family and friends for their encouragement and moral support. Very special thanks go to my teachers, Dr. Shiro Hattori and Prof. Fumiko Koide, and to my father, who gave me the opportunity to study and teach abroad and without whom none of this would have been possible. Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Mr. Michael Brase and Mr. Shigeyoshi Suzuki of Kodansha International, Ltd.; without their help, this publication would not have been possible.

About the Author
Kakuko Shoji, a resident of Honolulu, is a longtime instructor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is the author of Japanese Core Words and Phrases: Things You Can't Find in a Dictionary and Kodansha's Effective Japanese Usage Dictionary: A Concise Explanation of Frequently Confused Words and Phrases.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
[The opening pages to the first chapter of the book, with X's representing Japanese script and minus the original macrons and underlining.]

BASIC SENTENCE PATTERNS

There are two basic types of sentences in Japanese, the "A is B" type and the "A does B" type. In the "A is B" type, noun or adjectival phrases are linked by a form of the copula da/desu. In the "A does B" type, a verb is present, together with nouns or noun phrases.

**"A Is B" Type**

An "A is B" sentence does not have a verb and is therefore called a verbless sentence. When B is a noun or noun phrase, B tells what or who A is. For example [A and B underlined]:

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Kamaro wa Amerika no kuruma da.
The Camaro is an American car.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Piitaa wa Furansu kara no ryugakusei desu.
Peter is an exchange student from France.

When B is adjectival, B describes A:

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Akiko-san no ie wa totemo ookii desu.
Akiko's house is very big.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Kono ichigo wa amakute oishii desu.
These strawberries are sweet and tasty.

In an "A is B" sentence, the topic marker wa and/or the copula da/desu may be deleted if their presence is understood from the context:

XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX

Yuka: Watashi wa osushi o morau kedo, anata wa nani ni suru no?
Mari: Watashi, tenpura. Sakana, kirai na no.
Yuka: I'll take the sushi. What are you going to have?
Marie: I'll have the tempura. I don't like fish (that's why).

In the example above, Marie dropped the particle and copula because their presence is understood from the flow of the conversation. The full form of Marie's statement would be Watashi wa tenpura desu. (Watashi wa) Sakana ga kirai na no desu.

**Two Uses of desu**

In the last example, the desu of (Watashi wa) Sakana ga kirai na no desu merely makes the sentence formal instead of colloquial, while the desu of Watashi wa tenpura desu is substituting for a verb phrase such as Tenpura o moraimasu (I'll take ~), Tenpura ni shimasu (I've decided on ~), or Tenpura ga ii desu (I prefer/want to eat ~).

When a comma immediately follows a noun -- as in Watashi, tenpura and Sakana, kirai na no in the example above -- it often indicates that a particle has been deleted. While punctuation in Japanese is generally not as fixed as in English, this is one instance that is useful to keep in mind.

**Omitted Particles & Copulas**

When the copula substitutes for a verb, the preceding particle is often deleted.

Q: XXXXXXXXXXXX
A: XXXXXXXXXXXX

Q: Nani de iku n' desu ka.
A: Watashi wa basu desu (de ikimasu).
Q: How are you going?
A: (I'm going) by bus.

Q: XXXXXXXXXXXX
A: XXXXXXXXXXXX

Q. Nihon de wa doko ni irassharu n' desu ka.
A: Tokyo to Osaka desu (ni ikimasu).
Q: Where are you going in Japan?
A: (I'll go to) Tokyo and Osaka.

In more informal or casual situations, the copula may also be deleted:

XXXXXXXXXXXX
- XXXXXXXX
-- XXXXXX
--- XXXX

Watashi wa basu desu.
- Watashi wa basu.
-- Watashi, basu.
--- Basu.

XXXXXXXXXXXX
- XXXXXXXX

Tokyo to Osaka kara desu.
- Tokyo to Osaka kara.

Natural Japanese avoids mentioning or repeating what is understood from context.

Customer Reviews

The most important grammar book you'll find?
This could be the most important Japanese grammar book you could buy, and I'll tell you why. If you're already learning Japanese, you know how complex the sentence structures and grammar can be. It's one thing to be able to get your ideas across in a reasonably intelligent manner, but it's another thing entirely to make what you're saying flow and sound natural. This book teaches you how to connect ideas and sentences so they more naturally flow into the next one. Now, if you're like me, you might be really good and saying things in Japanese, as long as you don't have to build on what you said the sentence before, or put together one long thought or sentence. This book shows you how to "look ahead" so you can figure out how to construct the sentence from the beginning so that, by the time you get to the end, everything has neatly connected itself along the way.

My only regret is I didn't find this book sooner than I did. It is truly invaluable for the beginning student, and even for the intermediate student, as well. Don't even hesitate to buy this book. It is cheap and EASILY worth the price.

The Best in a Great Series
I have read/used almost all of Kodansha's "Power Japanese" series. "Basic Connections" (BC)and its immediate predecessor "Japanese Verbs at a Glance" (JVC) are the best. "All About Particles" and the many idiom/vocabulary books are useful references with nice examples (though many typos, especially in "Love, Hate, and Everything in Between"). However, BC and JVG are more communication/learning-oriented. They present very useful forms clearly. Moreover, BC has some discourse-level passages and actual exercises to do. It is by far the best in a great series for intermediate Japanese students.

One useful addition would be an index. It's very difficult to find structures, especially as the layout is a little crowded. But overall I enjoyed it very much. It contains structures that I read and hear all the time in Japan, but don't fully understand yet. The male/female usage designations were also helpful.

A definitive guide to Japanese sentence construction.
This book is a great reference for nearly any student of Japanese who wants to learn some common Japanese sentence structures. The book does assume that the reader knows some basics, such as simple verb conjugations, but even if one doesn't, the book is still a wonderful guide. It goes into enormous detail about many expressions of the language--too many to count--and has several examples for each (in kana/kanji, romaji, and English), to demonstrate all their possible uses. Also included are exercises and answers that the reader can practice with to guage his or her progress. The author has packed an overwhelming amount of information into this seemingly small volume, and it's simply too good a deal for anyone learning Japanese to pass up.