Beginning Japanese (part 2) [Paperback]

Professor Eleanor Harz Jorden (Author), Hamako Ito Chaplin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300001363 | ISBN-13: 978-0300001365 | Publication Date: September 10, 1963 | Edition: 15th printing

Japanese is the language of approximately 125 million people. This course, developed by Eleanor Harz Jorden of Cornell University, is concerned only with spoken Japanese in the "standard" dialect of educated inhabitants of Tokyo. Learning to speak the languageat normal speed is emphasized next since the aim of the course is to teach the learner to understand and speak the everyday language just as it is spoken by the Japanese

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 423 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 15th printing edition (September 10, 1963)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300001363
• ISBN-13: 978-0300001365
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #125,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #52 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Japanese
  • #81 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Japanese
  • #83 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Japanese

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book for the Beginner and good for practice, April 9, 2002

By 

Stephen M. Lerch (Elkton, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning Japanese: Part 1 (Yale Language Series) (Pt. 1) (Paperback)

I purchased this book (Beginning Japanese Prt.1) after having read many favorable reviews of it. I must say that I am quite pleased with what this has to offer for me, as a seasoned beginner when it comes to Japanese. This book will give you many practice conversations to try out and rip apart to create your own sentences, which is extremely helpful when trying to learn the structure of a Japanese sentence. There is a TON of practice given through this book, and as any language learner will tell you, if you don't practice you don't learn.

If there is a problem with this text, it would the pronunciation and Romanizing of some of the Japanese Hiragana/Katakana. According to this book (published in 1962), there is a Hiragana/Katakana symbol for SI. Well, in the following text, they explain that it is ACTUALLY pronounce SHI (not "see" as it appears). If you look in any newer dictionary, they either omit SI or put SHI(SI) for the symbol in question as the Romanization. 2 more examples would be HU (pronounced more like FU) and TI (pronounced CHI). Had this book been written more recently or recently revised, all of the words in this text which use TI,TU,SI,HU etc.. would have been written with CHI,TSU,SHI,FU respectively. So any Romanization you see after learning from this book may look a little weird at first as it would use this method for Romanization, not the method in this text. Reading this text after having learned the pronounciations of Hiragana/Katakana, not Romanizations, made it kind of difficult for me to read the words properly without a little extra thought speak the practice samples and then to be able to write the practice converations in Hiragana/Katakana (a great way to practice and learn the pronunciations of the Hiragana/Katakana symbols... good luck with Kanji).

Even with this little Romanization problem, this book gives you what you need to learn the Japanese language effectively; lots of GREAT explanations, lots of vocabulary and TONS of practice. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn to SPEAK (not read) Japanese. I also recommend you learn to speak then pick up another text to learn to read Japanese, as just speaking the language may prove difficult to cope with if you plan on travelling to Japan.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic for good reason, July 25, 2001

By 

Michael Callaghan (Jersey City, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning Japanese: Part 1 (Yale Language Series) (Pt. 1) (Paperback)

Drills drills drills! If you work through the ubiquidous "Japanese For Busy People" published by AJALT without having perused this tome of a textbook, then you're doing yourself a huge disservice. Jorden and Chaplin here present one of the most exercize-intensive books you are likely to find, and any beginning or intermediate student of Japanese knows that is a good thing. Every chapter contains hundreds of example sentences and drills, each one just slightly more advanced than the one before, and while there is next to no kana here, consider it a boot-camp workout for anyone who wants to speak this most difficult language. When I recently went through my textbooks to thin them out, this was one book which I did not even consider getting rid of. Even though it's for beginners there is enough practice here to warm up second and third year students as well. This is really a classic text and workbook which deserves enduring status. You want to know about Japanese? This is probably not the best choice - but if you want to speak Japanese, you could do no better than this exhaustive collection.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is the old version of "Japanese, the Spoken Language", December 29, 2003

By 

H. Z. "unquack" (U.K.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beginning Japanese: Part 1 (Yale Language Series) (Pt. 1) (Paperback)

This book was first published in 1962 and has been completely updated in the same author's "Japanese, the Spoken Language". I highly recommend that book and can't quite understand why this book is still in print.