Product Description

A concise summary of Japanese grammar is presented for beginning students of the language. Topics include parts of speech, sentence structure, idioms, and pronunciation advice. All Japanese words are presented phonetically. Important points of grammar or vocabulary, as well as subject heads, are printed in a second color as a quick-reference aid for students. New to this edition is a Japanese-English vocabulary list.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67254 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-08
• Released on: 2001-12-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Vinyl Bound
• 216 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780764120619
• Condition: USED - GOOD
• Notes:
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From the Back Cover
A methodical presentation of the elements of Japanese grammar, and usage make this book ideal for both those beginning their language study and those reviewing the Japanese they?ve already learned. Pronunciation, word order, sentence structure, and parts of speech are reviewed; idiomatic phrases, numbers, days, months, lists of synonyms and antonyms, and verb charts are included.

Customer Reviews

Pretty good
This book is pretty good. I like the fact you can stick it in your pocket. One thing I can't stand is books that are loaded with a bunch of "filler" space just to make it look like it contains alot of information. I think alot of authors could learn something from reading this book: That it doesn't have to be big to be complete. The material is presented immediately and in a clear fashion. It's hard to NOT understand the usage of all the different particles, pronoun usage, wa vs. ga, etc after reading this book.

Nice little Japanese grammar, and the price is right
Considering this book is over 240 pages long despite it's small size, and does a very nice job with the grammar, and is only 7 bucks to boot, it's a pretty good deal. It's small size makes it very portable and it would practically fit in your pocket.

The author includes separate chapters on all the parts of speech, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and so on, and most of the book is taken up by those aspects of the grammar.

At the back of the book there is a Special Topics section. These include chapters or sections on Numbers, Telling Time, Classifiers, Days, Months, Seasons, and the Weather, Family Relationships, Useful Phrases, Borrowed Words (mainly from Chinese), Synonyms, Antonyms, Short and Long Vowels, Double Consonants, Same Pronunciation but Different Meaning (for 25 words), Different Pitch, Different Meaning (for 16 words), and a 250-word vocabulary list at the very back.

The beginning of the book has chapters on pronunciation and phonetics, word order, and the Japanese writing system. The font is color-coded for certain things, which some people may find easier on the eye. I sort of wish language books, like the 501 Verbs books that are so well-known, wouldn't do this, but it's probably okay for most people.

Japanese has one great advantage over the typical Indo-European language in that it has almost 100% regular verbs. There are only two that are irregular. (Turkish is one of the few languages I've seen with no irregular verbs). It lacks many of the tenses European and other languages have, and it lacks a true future tense. There is no case system such as in German, Russian, Latin, and Greek.

However, it makes up for that in the complexity of its modal verbs or mood constructions, which signify conditionality, probability, unrcentainty, or the attitude of the speaker toward the subject. And the particle system, which serves diverse functions, from modifying the meanings of verbs to marking the subject or topic of a sentence, is also something very foreign to Indo-European language speakers, and is perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the language.

Another odd aspect of Japanese that is very different from most languages is that adjectives actually belong to verbs rather than nouns and are inflected to agree with them.

A small grammar like this can't give you everything you need to know about these topics, but this little grammar is still a nice, compact resource, and as I said, the price is right. I you get a book on the particle system, such as A Dictionary of Japanese Particles, by Sue A. Kawashima, which treats 100 of the most important particles, you should be in pretty good shape.

Beginners only
This book provides a good introduction to Japanese grammar for the beginner and there are plenty of usage examples. However, due to its small size some points are not explained in enough detail and in other areas you are expected to understand the grammar points through examples alone. I would not recommend this to intermediate or advanced level students, but for the beginner it provides a very good starting point due to its clear layout and uncomplicated explanations.