Essential Japanese (H)

by Samuel E. Martin

Book Overview

Emphasizing sentence patterns as the key to attaining a basic control of Japanese, Essential Japanese is a comprehensive introduction to the modern colloquial language. Stressing mastery of the fundamentals, this is the text for the busy person wishing to learn Japanese in a reasonable amount of time.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804801711
• ISBN13: 9780804801713
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
• Length: 461 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

Great Survey of Japanese Grammar

I have been studying Japanese for two years. I'm a very analytic sort when it comes to language. I love grammar; I have successfully learned several languages and actually teach languages. This book is incredible. For two years I have sought a book like this; at last I have found one. It seems that there are usually two choices in Japanese grammars written for English speakers. Either they are so oriented to modern descriptive linguistic theory--always hedging and qualifying statements--that they are difficult or, at times, impossible to follow, and, therefore, are inefficient guides for someone who just wants to know how to say something; or they merely give models for emulation with little explanation of the underlying grammatical principles. This book is not like that. It's quite old-fashioned. In fact, I doubt a book like this would be written nowadays; its approach is just not fashionable. In a prescriptive context, it methodically and succinctly and thoroughly explains the structure of well-formed Japanese utterances. I bought an edition from the 1960's, and it has one flaw that I can see people not liking: the Japanese is written all in Romaji. It may be that later editions have corrected that. To be fair to the author, his express purpose is to get people speaking Japanese, not reading and writing it; his view is that people can go elsewhere to begin the daunting (but not impossible) task of reading Japanese. This flaw may be addressed in later editions. All this being said, most people would not like this as a beginning textbook. It's really suited for intermediate students who are seeking lucid explanations of grammatical issues they may have learned in a less thorough way. If you really want to understand basic Japanese grammar, get this book!

One of the Best Self-Teachers Available

I concur with the other users of this site in my opinion of this book. You really can learn colloquial Japanese from this book. It is a bit dated - it was, I believe, originally written for American GI's and missionaries who found themselves in Japan after World War II and needed a good self teaching book which could be used on the ground, preferably with a native speaker to go through the material with you or at least to provide pointers on pronunciation. However, this doesn't mean that what you're learning is too basic. Virtually every feature of the spoken language is at least touched on, and best of all, there are a lot of illustrative sentences for every item covered. The whole book is split into only ten lessons, and each lesson seems to last forever, but when you actually start working with the book it is much easier than it initially appears.There is another book by Martin out that includes copies of the dialogues from this book in written Japanese, if you really feel a need for that. While of course it is a nice idea to be able to work with the writing system immediately when learning a new language, with Japanese I don't really really believe that this is a good idea. All told, Japanese is probably the most difficult language in the world to learn to read and write correctly, more so than Chinese, so I would suggest to the would-be learner that she work with this book for a while and then start on the written language with other learning materials.

An excellent method to learn the nitty-gritty/structure.

Of all the courses I have purchased, I keep returning to this one. It is thorough in its pedagogy, and provides enough practice material to really drive the grammar into your head. I would like to see tapes for this book. It would really enhance its overall coursework.

Very good content, best for intermediate learner

It can be greatly improved by using Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji in the text. All Romaji is the only weakness of this book.