Customer Reviews

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar

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There is a bit of a myth about Japanese grammar--that it is too complicated, too alien for the non-native speaker to ever really master. This is a myth that many Japanese perpetuate themselves, seen in unflattering characterizations of non-native speakers, or in the (unhelpful) praise lavished upon anyone who can speak Japanese to any degree, no matter how ungrammatical it may be. This is a myth that is also unfortunately and unintentionally perpetuated by guides like Jorden's "Japanese the Spoken Language" that do the learner a disservice by explaining grammatical points in a language better suited for a linguist than a language learner. For people like you and me, who want to surpass these low expectations and confusing explanations and start on the road to true fluency, "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" is an essential companion.

Let's face it--from the perspective of a native English speaker, mastering Japanese grammar is difficult. Very difficult. Don't trust anyone who says otherwise! Much is made of the difficult writing system, but mastering grammar is perhaps even more difficult and essential to smooth communication. Sure, learning the difference between "wa" and "ga" is not as sexy as learning how to write "love" or "raccoon dog" in kanji, but it's many times more useful on a daily basis. By providing easy-to-understand explanations as well as examples of both good and bad usage, the student is given a better understanding of basic (but still difficult-to-master) grammatical points. This dictionary does an especially good job of contrasting similar constructs that give beginning-to-intermediate (and even many advanced) students trouble (wa/ga, aida/uchi, ageru/kureru, hazu/beki, ni/de etc.)

Although I don't think it's possible to gain complete comfort and mastery of Japanese without living in Japan, or at the very least, interacting with Japanese people on a regular basis, this book is the perfect guide for explaining the nuances that a beginner might not notice, and an intermediate student might be aware of but not fully understand. This includes the deceptive "similar constructs" I mentioned before, words that are not easy to translate into English (sekkaku, darou come to mind), and other issues such as auxiliary verbs and onomatopoetic "sound words". Whether you're learning Japanese in school, living abroad in Japan, or even just studying on your own, "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" is an indispensable companion for your studies.

One last comment--there are a few reviews that have comments along the lines of "yes, but the Japanese don't really talk like this" to which I say, "You're missing the point." That's a bit like arguing against learning multiplication tables because in the "real world" there are calculators. Sure it would be nice to go directly from "Sir, please give me that pen" to "Hey man, can ya grab that pen for me?" but language learning isn't that easy. If you understand the fundamentals of grammar, you will understand Japanese of all formalities, dialects, and other variations and transmutations. It is much easier to learn the shortcuts once you have a strong foundation because you are in a position to understand the nuances and principles involved. In other words, you know and understand what exactly is being "shortcutted". If you only learn the shortcuts, you will have a hard time generalizing your knowledge for usage out of a narrow, specific context. Worse, you might not even realize that you are even making a grammatical or etiquette mistake by misapplying knowledge from one context to another. The worst thing a language learner can do is to try to take shortcuts to "speed up" his or her progress without taking the time to build up a steady base. This dictionary provides that strong foundation that is needed for the serious Japanese language learner.

6/24/09 addendum: I've seen a small handful of reviews that insinuate that a strong knowledge of grammar is only important for reading & writing Japanese, and perhaps only for reading & writing formal Japanese at that. This couldn't be more untrue, and this gets to the idea that there are no shortcuts to language learning, even if you're just interested in "conversational Japanese". For any language, the spoken language and the written language are not the same, and formal and colloquial language differ as well. But they all rely on the same principles of grammar, even though they might be applied in different ways. You might be speaking casually with your friends, but greeting them with "Up what is?" instead of "What's up?" is still wrong (unless you're Yoda). All because of grammar.

This book simply has no peer. It is by far the clearest, most thorough, most concise and well-thought-out Japanese language resource out there. If you really want to understand Japanese and how it works, this is the tool for you.

You can use this book as a reference when you come across a new grammatical pattern, or systematically go through it to learn new ones. The book explains Japanese grammar points in clear English and gives many example sentences to cover the range of their uses.

People often ask me, "what's the best textbook for learning Japanese?" In my opinion, there are no good textbooks. What you need are good RESOURCES on certain areas, and this is the best for grammar. Unlike all the silly "Mr. Smith goes to Tokyo" textbooks, this book does not make you go through a pointless story from which you mine a few nuggets of information. A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar presents you with what you want to know, with no time wasted on anything else. This and a good Kanji-learning resource are what you need to begin your road to true proficiency in Japanese.

I bought this book in Japan, so I don't how how available it is in North America. This book has become a vital part of my Japanese language library, helping me in more ways than I can count. Along with my English to Japanese dictionary, verb ductionary, and my kanji dictionary, this helps me structure any sentence I've ever wanted. By memorizing a few formulas and understanding examples of grammar, I understand the language so much more, I can express most thoughts I want, and I'm a step ahead of most people in my Japanese class. This is the transition for a beginner student between simple and complex sentences.

I had been living in Japan for about 9 months and was still having a very difficult time with Japanese grammar. I didn't understand enough grammar to be able to put together my ideas and express thoughts. All I could do was recite phrases I had memorized. I had read through other Japanese grammar books but I just couldn't understand the explanations. This book gives very concise explanations that I could understand and many very helpfull examples that give you the proper context. Also this book compares and contrasts similar grammar patterns. Before I bought this book I couldn't talk, but by the time I was 3/4 through this book I could hold conversations and express the ideas I had not been able to do for almost a year and it gave me a good base to build on as I became fluent in Japanese.

The book explains grammar matters very thourously, impeccably published and is really convenient to use (the things you might need had been sought after). It is, however, not a good way to bootstrap yourself into the language, so to speak, you probably need to have decent grammar knowledge to get the most out of it. Since you'll be there sometime, the book is worth to buy anyway ^_^

I haven't said something spectacular in my review, I mainly wrote it because the book is really good and you don't want to miss it.

This book is great. It is as it says a dictionary of basic Japanese grammar.
This book explains grammar in a way that is very easy to understand. With this book and the "Dictionary of intermediate Japanese grammar", you will be set. I recommend all serious students of Japanese to get these two books. Then find a good Kanji study system, and follow that up with a good workbook, to enforce practice.

The dicionary starts with a short section on basic Japanese grammar. Here, they explain the verb conjugations, and give some explanation about the characteristics of Japanese grammar. After this is done, the dictionary it self starts. The entries in the dictionary are alphabetically ordered. One of the things it contain are particles (of course). But besides particles it also contains entries on verb conjugations, different kinds of politeness, formation of irregular verbs, ... In short, I'd bet that almost every grammatical question you might have, could be answered by searching this dictionary.

Then about the entries themselves: every entry has the same layout. Each entry starts with the name of the entry (ex. mada) and states what kind of word(-part) it is (particle, adverb, conjugation, ...). Next, a simple explanation is given for the word, it's meaning or function. After this, you can find key sentences, formation-rules, examples, and possibly notes and related expressions. The examples are given in both japanese writing and romanji, together with their english translation.

I know this dictionary costs more than some of the other books on Japanese grammar that you might find, but I definitely recommend this one to all serious students of the Japanese language. If you are serious about learning Japanese, you'll definately appreciate this dictionary.

I think that this book is the best book for learning basic Japanese grammar principles. It provides many good examples, in both Japanese and romanized Japanese with a translation of the sentence following. It also provides information on the finer points of the grammar point and directs the reader to related grammar points. In addition, it has a section on sentence structure and the various forms of the verbs. A must buy!

This book is a great reference. It contains a grammar index at the back allowing you to look up what you want to say in English. For example, need to know how to express "While something happened, something else happened?" No problem - look up "while" in the index, which guides you to "aida," "nagara," and "uchi." Each entry explains in detail how to construct an appropriate sentence, with plenty of examples. There are also notes that tell you the differences between similar expressions (e.g., "aida" and "nagara" are interchangeable under certain conditions, "uchi ni" is more appropriate under these conditions, etc.). It is on the expensive side, but is well worth it, especially considering it is a hefty 600+ pages containing around 200 grammar entries in small font. I use this book every day when writing Japanese, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for the ultimate Japanese grammar reference - an awesome book!

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is basically intended for 1st and 2nd year students and teachers of Japanese for whom the grammatical explanations from textbooks were not good enough. One common complaint of language textbooks is that they tend to be exhaustive in drilling a small amount of grammar. This approach seems to be favored by foreign language departments at universities, but has the inherent flaw that it withholds some of the most interesting grammar until the second or third semester, thus leaving beginning students crippled when they want to say certain things.

What this book does have:
Comprehensive dictionary of "grammatical words." This includes, but is not limited to: particles, qualifiers, special noun/particle constructions, verbs that give other words a different meaning when used in a certain pattern, and verb endings. The reason I love this book is that it's actually readable, and is not necessarily just a reference. Look up some obscure usage of "o," and you may find yourself reading about the various nuances of using the "o ~ ni naru" construction or learn a new word in "owaru". There are more than 500 pages devoted to this sort of thing, and each entry comes with clear, and detailed explanations, as well as 1-4 (avg. 2) pages of examples and further elaboration. Particles with multiple meanings are given multiple entries to give each usage ample space to be explained.

There are also about 100 pages of basic grammar contained in the introduction and the appendicies. This includes basic sentence construction (incl. detail about word order tendencies, the parts of a Japanese sentence, pronouns, polite speech and a variety of other subjects) and ensures that the reader will have not just a basic, but a solid fundamental understanding of Japanese grammar. Additionally, there are appendices for how to use certain words that take irregular particles, counters and how to generally predict the irregular forms that a given counter takes, which I found helpful. Each Japanese word in this book is written in romaji, but is also accompanied with its corresponding Kanji, which is also nice.

What this book is not:
This book is not a short overview of grammar, but nor is it a complete instructional method in itself. It's intended for people who are already learning to speak Japanese either in a college course, from self study or whatever method, but want more detail about grammar.

One thing that disappointed me was that I thought I'd find verb conjugation charts with explanations on how to use each conjugation. Most textbooks tend to only teach grammar little by little, and even then all the usages may not be listed, so finding everything in the same place would be a plus. This book lists many verb endings alphabetically, including many of the derived ones like "~nakereba naranai" which means "have to/must (+ verb)" but is derived from the "if (I) don't ~" construction; however, skimming through 500 pages of alphabetical entries which may or may not be verb endings is not what I'd call a convenient verb conjugation chart.

I'd like to mark a point off for being a grammar book without a convenient explanation of verb conjugation, but I know of no other book that has such comprehensive examples and explanations on the other topics all in one place. Definitely a must buy for every student of the language.