Customer Reviews

Japanese Vocabulary

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is good but it has two flaws. One the vocabulary is extremely English orientated. Basically they took a English vocabulary book and wrote 'near' Japanese equivalents for the words. For nouns this leaves out a ton of important Japan only cultural words. For adjectives and phrases there are forced translations like 'Thank goodness! - Arigatai.'

As mentioned before, there is no kanji except for in the index. Why this book was orientated towards travelers and why travelers might need to use words like "nuclear proliferation," and "unemployment compensation," is beyond me however.

There is another book called Japanese Vocabulary for Speakers & Readers ISBN 4-590-00706-1, I don't think it is printed in the US. In terms of volume, it is inferior to this title, but it is very Japan orientated and contains the actual kanji for each entry.

This handy little vocabulary covers so much it is incredible. However, I have two little complaints. While there are characters for all the words, they are in the summary glossary in the back instead of on the main pages. So, everytime I read a word I have to flip to the back to see the Japanese spelling. That gets annoying when I'm trying to cover a lot in my limited time. I also have noticed that, like almost all the books on Japanese in America, this one follows the trend on omiting any details on the Japanese pitch accent system. The book does indicate long vowels with an accent mark, but that isn't the same thing. I'm talking about the method by which one indicates the difference between words with meanings keyed to the pitch, like hashi (bridge) versus hashi (chopsticks). Lots of students know this phenomenon exists, but most books don't tell which sounds within these words should be louder. It would be nice to see a vocabulary that does address this. The only published work I have found that explains it is the Oxford Pocket Kenkyusha Dictionary. All its entries have marks indicating appropriate pitch.

This book is superb. It has vocabulary for various diverse categories(e.g. "Animals", "Characteristics and social traits", "The hotel room", "Hardware", "The changing world", "Computers", and dozens and dozens more) and a brief but very useful English-Japanese dictionary at the end. Most importantly for a beginner like me, the pronunciation of every Japanese word in the book is given and the dictionary presents the Japanese translation of English in romanized letters and Japanese characters. Therefore, if you're going for the gold like me and trying to learn the spoken and written word, you have an excellent ... book to start with. It will take you awfully far for just a few bucks. *****Highly recommended.

Despite its usefulness or not, on the Kindle, most of the text is in the form of images which do not zoom and are too small or faint to read. Completely unusable. Do not buy this!

We are a military family stationed in Japan. Our children, aged 13, 12, and 9, have opted to attend Japanese public school. This book is helping them to recognized vocabulary related to school subjects, especially math and science. Reading words, then hearing them in context is a valuable learning tool, and this book is divided effectivley for that purpose. I have ordered two extra ones, on for their Japanese tutor, and one for me! I recommend this book for anyone studying Japanese.

This book is a very very good book to use for those that are seeking to expand on their japanese vocabulary.

This book is a dictionary that is catoragized in subjects not alphabeticly. There is no kana or kanji in here, instead there is some rediculous pronunceation. I have been living in japan for 6 months and bought this book to help me BUILD my vocabulry. Unfortantly it doesnt help you learn anything. I recomend this book for travelers not for anyone actuly learning japanese.

I picked up this book because it breaks the world down in how it should sound. Great learning material for such a great price ^_^