Schaum's Outline of Japanese Grammar (Paperback)

by Keiko Chevray (Author), Tomiko Kuwahira (Author) "The affirmative non-past of copula is "da" (plain) or "desu" (polite) and is equivalent to "is", "am," or "are" English..." (more)
Key Phrases: takakatta desu, mitai desu, omotte imasu, United States, Give the Japanese, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Schaum's Outline of Japanese Grammar covers the sequential treatment of the essentials of Japanese grammar, from simpler concepts to more complex, makes learning and reviewing easy.

• Concrete examples following coverage of grammar functions promote students, understanding of material
• Practice exercises use meaningful, practical contexts to develop students, mastery of grammatical elements
• Chapter-ending summary exercises let students practice all functions learned in each section

Language Notes
Text: English, Japanese

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Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (May 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071342206
• ISBN-13: 978-0071342209
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #481,888 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good for review if you have been cursed with JSL, September 9, 2003

By	Polyglot (cambridge, ma) - See all my reviews

For those of you with the extreme misfortune of having to use Eleanor Jorden's abysmal text (Jorden's Solipsistic Language), this book may save your grade. It contains all of the grammar covered in first year Japanese. Furthermore, all examples are given in hiragana/katakana/kanji, with a romanji and an English translation. In other words, although this is a grammar survey, it also provides you with the reading practice that you'll need in order to achieve any degree of fluidity in Japanese. Cover up the English and the romanji lines and see how much you can read. You won't get all of the kanji, but even reading everything around the kanji will help you, and the more you see kanji, the less strange they seem. You will pick some up just from the frequency with which they appear. As for the grammar explanations: they are both concise and self-sufficient, just what a beginner needs. Finally, the book provides answers to all exercises, an often neglected feature of texts written by egomaniacs such as Eleanor Jorden. Buy this book if you want a clear and straightforward Japanese grammar book that offers exercises and solutions, in addition to reading practice and an easy to use index and table of contents.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good value for money, August 27, 2002

By	alice (melbourne, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews

I bought this book a few months ago as it seemed to explain most of the essential points of Japanese grammar as well as provide exercises to test your understanding. At my local foreign language book shop, there was a plethora of Japanese language books to choose from but some only skimmed the surface where as others were great slab-like enclyclopaedias which should have come with a warning "contents under extreme pressure".
The book is divided into fifteen chapters and covers subjects such as adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, particles, conjunctions, verbs, conditional clauses, interrogative words, nominalization, honorific expresssions etc etc. The last chapter is particularly good because it illustrates several commonly used japanese expressions. There are nicely varied examples (written in english, romaji and kanji/kana) in every chapter with corresponding exercises and answers(great!).
Sure there were a few typos and dubious answers but i'm sure they will be edited when the next edition comes out. To tell you the truth, they didn't bother me much at all.
I would have given this book another half star if particles were explained in greater depth but that probably would have doubled the book's thickness.
Overall, a good buy

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Basic Grammar Guide, February 24, 2007

By	Jeff Stewart - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Technically, this is a cram guide for College students studying japanese for courses. But it makes an ideal companion for people living in Japan who are learning a lot of words through osmosis, but need a little help with the grammar to help them structure what they know and take their Japanese to a basic level.

I used this book to help me with my grammar within 6 months of arriving in Japan, and it helped me make the leap from being able to make single to triple word declarations in Japanese, to being able to speak in full sentences, and helped put me on the road to fluency. It shows you how to form basic sentences (for example comparisons "X is bigger than Y" etc) in a simple, straightforward manner. Since it's an outline of the most fundamental grammar, all of it is highly relevant and useful, with no filler.

One thing though- As useful as it is for beginners, since it only covers fundamental elementary grammar, good students will quickly outgrow it. Once finished with it I would recommend "A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar" by Seiichi Nakino and Michio Tsutsui, also available here on amazon.

By the way- the reviewer below is right about "Wo" not being a mistranslation. It's a standard, if confusing way to spell it. You need to
type "wo" to get that particle if you're typing in Japanese on a web browser or microsoft word, for example.