Japanese, The Spoken Language: Part 3 (Yale Language Series) (Pt.3) [Paperback]

Professor Eleanor Harz Jorden (Author), Associate Professor Mari Noda (Contributor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300041918
• ISBN-13: 978-0300041910
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #778,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars doumo, January 24, 2005

By 

A reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Japanese, The Spoken Language: Part 3 (Yale Language Series) (Pt.3) (Paperback)

Such a simple little word "doumo". Yet when I came to Japan 13 and a bit years ago it started to bug me. Why? Well becasue I knew that it meant "thank you"- everyone knows that right?

But the strange thing was that as my ears became more attuned to what people around me were saying, I realized that they were using "doumo" in sometimes very strange ways. When they greeted one another or parted for example. So I thought- well maybe they just use "thank-you" somewhat more broadly than we do in English. But then you hear things like "doumo henn" and "doumo omoshiroi". What on Earth is that all about? So I went to the bookshops and checked every Japanese text I could find and all agreed that "doumo" means thank-you. Seems everyone knew that except for the Japanese.

Some time later I chanced upon a copy of JSL and, never having seen it before, looked to see what it had to say about "doumo". Lo and behold- there it was. A simple account that explained all the seemingly disconected uses of "doumo" that I had heard.

The series provides plenty of other similarly insightful accounts of Japanese usage that assist with the process of learning to manipulate the language at a fine-grained level.

It gets four stars instead of 5 as there is a lack of practice with extended sequences and the recording quality of the tapes is poor.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great tool for understanding the logic behind the language, however..., January 29, 2006

By 

a_motivated_learner (NY) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Japanese, The Spoken Language: Part 3 (Yale Language Series) (Pt.3) (Paperback)

As a student taking Japanese in a well-known University that uses the JSL series in its Spoken Language track, this book has become my CRUCH in speaking Japanese. It uses conversations as models to learn from, drills to teach you ways to utilize your new vocabulary and grammar tools, a listening section and translation section (unfortunately without an answer key). The most helpful aspect of the book though are the in-depth grammar explanations; they really help you internalize the meanings and usages of honorifics, conjugations, special words and compounds, speech styles (careful/casual, direct/distal, gentle/blunt...) and so forth. The idea is to help you learn to create these sentences yourself, to the point where it seems natural (although this ideal cannot be achieved without an extended stay in Japan), or at least to the point where you will know the right thing to say in certain social contexts.

While the grammar explanations are stellar and offer students a chance to construct new sentences through logic (a very linguistical approach to language-learning), I have found some problems with the series:

1) It's all in romaaji. Let's face it. When you go to Japan, almost everything will be in evil but beautiful scribbles called 'kanji' -- even with JWL - the written language accompaniment - you won't even have the reading capability of a 1st grader.

2) You NEED a GOOD teacher to help you through the series. I did the entire third book myself (by far the most difficult) and I didn't learn it nearly as well as I learned the previous lessons.

3) The slow but exponential learning curve. Things won't "click" until you're more than half-way through the series. There are 30 lessons and around lesson 19 I was able to start constructing complex thoughts in a managable time-frame. However, after that I could start to have basic conversations pertaining to everyday life.

4) This series was originally written for DIPLOMATS during Japan's bubble-economy era, and it really shows. You learn American Consulate in Lesson 7 and air in Lesson 30. Subsequently, you're language will be EXTREMELY formal and stiff compared to today's standards, but it's better to be polite than rude, right? Moreover, slight problem, a few words here and there are outdated (ie Monbusho should be Monbukagakusho, or Monkasho for short).

5) Although the grammar explanations are great, you will probably need a tool to fully understand it... I suggest google-ing Tae Kim's Japanese page. Amazing.

In response to the 'huji' review: Jorden has a very good reason for changing a couple spellings for consistency's sake. It will limit the number of exceptions to the already-overloaded conjugation rules. Just deal with it. English has 37 vowel sounds and only 5 vowels!

Conclusion:
If you're learning this in a class-setting, I say go for it, but still make sure that you're getting a good bit of writing in on your own; luckily, there's a writing portion added to our class. If you're attempting to learn the language alone (um good luck!) you should use a WIDE VARIETY of sources. No single textbook will be your cure-all. Furthermore, make sure you have good listening materials: JSL can provide that. In finishing the third book of this series alone, I have found it useful to do all the drills and use other textbooks to help me. This includes Miura's 'An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese' and 'Breaking into Japanese Literature' by Giles Murray. In addition, it wouldn't hurt to have a good kanji dictionary (I suggest 'Kanji Learner's Dictionary' by Jack Halpern).

Finally, I hope I have been fair in my review of this book, and more so, I hope that this helped!

ganbatte kudasai!

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay but not great, January 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Japanese, The Spoken Language: Part 3 (Yale Language Series) (Pt.3) (Paperback)

At this level of study not having kana and kanji is an absurd blunder. The only way to get the non-romanized versions of the text is to buy a very ugly teacher's edition of the core conversations and drills, which themselves become a bit too much like brute memorization here.

This book is great for polishing your knowledge and tiny grammar subtleties, but something extra is needed in order to prepare yourself for making your own sentances, not ones you memorize from a book. (This could be provided by say, a teacher)

So in this sense, a book more geared towards self-learning and adaptation would be the second half of the Yookoso series, Yookoso: A Continuation of Contemporary Japanese. This book is JSL2,3 and JWL2+more combined into one.