Customer Reviews

The Handbook of Japanese Verbs

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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This is a wonderful little book. You need to be at a point in your Japanese studies where working with verbs is a problem before you even bother. And you need to know the hiragana to make best use of the handbook. (Everything is written in romaji in addition to kanji though.)

Now if you know a fair amount of Japanese and if you know your kana, you might think you aren't going to need a book that deals only with verbs. Unlike a (proper) English sentence, a Japanese sentence can comprise nothing but verbs (although some of them might be acting like nouns). If you know why you say kawanai, but kaimasu, then you don't need this book. If you know the difference between sumitai and sumitagaru, then you don't need this book.

But if verbs are giving you a problem or if you are moving from a purely auditory learning system to the written language, then you will want this book. I found the "pattern" treatment of Type I or u-dropping verbs particularly helpful. (I learned it in about half an hour.) Also, since I am working with written Japanese more than spoken Japanese, I am finding the comprehensive list of patterns (over 150) extremely useful. But if I were concentrating on the spoken language I would still need to know which form goes with which auxiliary. And it's all here, presented systematically for easy digestion.

My only complaint is that the practices give too much help with the auxiliaries. It really needs two levels of practice -- one that reinforces verb endings and one that reinforces verb ending + auxiliaries.

This very friendly little book is a fantastic tutorial in the proper use of Japanese verb forms in nearly all their conjugations and uses. Sample sentences are throughout, most of them quite useful and suitable for memorization verbatim, and workbook style drills accompany every section of every chapter.

This is, however, more of a workbook than a reference; for the latter, look no further than Naoko Chino's "Japanese Verbs at a Glance". For a workbook, however, this has (in my experience) no peer.

"Language learning is overlearning", and with that in mind, Kamiya offers lots of practice and sample bunkei which, when worked through, will offer a truly impressive insight into the mechanics of Japanese verb USAGE (not just academic conjugation).

My last class (I'm a second year student at the Geos School in NYC) taught me the '-nagara' verb ending. By using Kamiya's book at home these past few days I feel confident in my usage of what amounted to no more than a footnote in "Japanese For Busy People II" textbook. Excellent. Now I can tell my girlfriend not to talk with her mouth full!

A fun, fine, and ultimately indespensible book for any (that means all) verb-challenged intermediate students. Kamiya is one of the best teachers I've studied - try to get a copy of her "Japanese Particle Workbook" - another five star title on a stubbornly difficult subject.

This is not a "user friendly" book for the casual learner of Japanese. This is nothing more or less than a small, pocket-book sized grammar text for using Japanese verbs. "Te" forms, "tara" forms, "hoshii" forms are all covered, along with pretty much every other possible conjugation. This is no dictionary, however, so do not expect to learn any new words. Just expect to make better use of the verbs you already know.

The sections are broken down well, and there are very small practice sections at the end of each chapter. For what it is, it is an excellent resource. I would recommend this book to serious, college level learners of Japanese.

As a beginner in Japanese, it feels like everything I can write would sound to a native speaker like, "See Spot. See Spot run." This book will help you to apply the vocabulary you have in new and more interesting ways: "Is that Spot I see? My, Spot can run!"

It is _not_ a good way to improve vocabulary, though. The included list of verbs is somewhat limited. This book is really for helping you apply verbs in new and different ways, not so much about teaching you new verbs.

I like the book for three things. Firstly, it is really systematic. Each section begins with the sentence pattern, followed with several examples, and then the exercise section. Secondly, this book comes with Kanji and Romaji. As Kanji is the so-called life-application form of Japanese (i.e. used in Japanese comic books, newspapers, novels etc), the use of Kanji in the book helps me to recognise written Kanji in my favourite Japanese magazines (for eg.). The use of Romaji helps me to know the pronunciation of each word, so it saves me the trouble of having to check the dictionary. Romaji also helps with my listening. Lastly, its syllabus closely resemble my Japanese class materials, and hence it was a great refresher for someone who has learned Japanese for three years (i.e. but that was four years ago).

Like all of Taeko Kamiya's books, this one is simultaneously dull and vital. You get no gimmicks, no shiny drawings, no funky catchphrases or adorable characters. It's a book you trudge through rather than treasure and read amidsts oceans of giggles.

Still, I like it. There's no BS. The material is presented as straightforwardly as possible. The emphasis is on the examples rather than on the explanations. And this is stuff you just HAVE to know about if you're going to ever speak Japanese.

Arguably, though, you'd be better off buying Kamiya-sensei's Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication, which is similar but more comprehensive. Neither of these books is going to light up your day, but nobody ever said learning Japanese would be easy.

The book is not a handbook. It is a primer with lots of exercises. It also includes answers to the exercises and a short dictionary. If you want a primer and want to do exercises, you can consider getting this book. Otherwise, you can have a look at Japanese Verbs at a Glance (Power Japanese Series) (Kodansha's Children's Classics). That book also has problems, nut is much better.

The Handbook of Japanese Verbs by Taeko Kamiya is aimed at beginning and intermediate students who want to learn a lot of Japanese verbal patterns in one place. In this way, the book succeeds. It contains some 150 entries categorized by each verb form (i.e. "i-stem," u-stem, "te-form," etc.). This is a great aid to the learning process and may just save you from committing some grammatical gaffe later down the line. Each entry contains pithy, insightful explanations and three example sentences each. Additionally, the glossary contains about 12 pages of vocabulary drawn from the example sentences, which is nice for such a short book.

The categorization by verb form I mentioned is also a detraction, however. Since many of these auxiliaries can be added to several forms for a predictable change in meaning, I often found myself bored as I got further in the book, seeing the same auxiliaries I'd seen before, only now in the past tense or the negative. In fact, this bloats the book and if one were to take it into account, the actual number of unique entries treated is closer to 115 than 150. I think the book would be more useful with some sort of cross-referencing in each entry to note all the stems with which it can be used rather than segregating obviously related entries for the sake of the book's format.

Although perhaps not a fair criticism, this book only covers a very basic set of auxiliaries and inflections on the whole, which is frustrating to intermediate students wanting to move on. Japanese verbal inflection is a rich subject matter that goes well beyond the scope of this book, and there's really no reason it shouldn't have been covered more thoroughly. In additon to the bloating of the number of entries I referred to in the previous paragraph, the author did not include any advanced entries such as polite speech, literary-only language or any colloquial/slang language, which again is frustrating. This book could have been much more comprehensive, yet it comes off as elementary and repetitive.

The practice exercises in this book are basically a waste of page space, yet there are so many of them! These are all of the rather useless fill-in-the-blank type, take up about a page each and occur every 2-5 pages. I have never found that filling in a blank with the "correct" verb conjugation helped me to better speak or understand a language. I would have preferred that these practice exercises had been left out, to make room for more informational entries about Japanese verbs.

In all, The Handbook of Japanese Verbs is a very useful book that fills a need in my Japanese language materials library for verb-only grammar with adequate usage notes and an accessible format. Although all of this information is available in other books, no other books I've found have limited themselves to just verbs or treated verbs by "form" like this. The book could be better if it were less bloated, better organized and included some advanced verbal inflections, though.

I have been studying Japanese for almost 2 years now in a classroom with Japanese for busy people. Although these are good books they lack detail in certain aspects such as verbs and particles. If I had Handbook of Japanese verbs from the start I think I would be almost fluent by now or well on my way to be. The book breaks down verbs to an easy to understand format with exercise and answers in the back so that you know if you got it correct. Overall a really good book and you can't beat the price for this kind of help.

Excellent grammar handbook. The field of "verbology" in Japanese seems at first sight a jungle (especially for those - like me- who do not master yet Japanese writing -especially kanjis- or grammatical structures), with this book you will find a trailblazer for future explorations. It provides a clear and systematic approach to the subject, the use of romaji characters is also of much help - hiraganas could have been used instead but that's not a necessity. Indexes following the main parts of the book give you a detailed map of your whereabouts.