Book Suggestions
Here's a list of books that I've found helpful in my studies of Japanese.
Making Sense of Japanese - ***** - This is a great book that that helps clear up common misconceptions and difficult points of Japanese that most textbooks don't. It helps you to understand hard points such as subjectless sentences, WA and GA, hodo, giving and receiving, shiru and wakaru, and many others. It is written in a sort of humorous way and explains Japanese in a way English minds can understand.
How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese - ***** - This is a really neat vocabulary building book. It consentrates on the more refined and intellectual areas of the Japanese language. It contains select vocabulary from subjects of logic, mathematics, science, litteriture, philosophy, religion, government, law and also gives a handful of very useful examlpe sentences for each list of vocabulary.
Japanese Vocabulary for Speakers & Readers - ***** - This vocabulary book divides its 6000+ words into relative groups making it easy to study. It also has a cool little feature where the author has put a star next to the more common and important words. This allows you to decide whether you want to just skim over a section, getting only the neccessary words, or completely exhaust a section, learning every possible related word.
13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese - **** - This book is actually more like 13 study tips for making studying fun. It goes from using English import words, to how phone numbers, to games and riddles. The only thing is there are a lot of excess that I didn't find very helpful, but the majority is pretty good.
Kanji Idioms - **** - This book introduces 4-kanji idioms in Japanese. It has everything from "aimai-moko" (vague and indistinct) to "wayou-setchuu" (a mixture of Japanese and Western styles). This book tells you the kanji, the pronounciation, it's litteral translation, and it's meaning as well as 2 or 3 example sentences for each. It also gives a little history on some. Though I don't use this book as much as I should, it's really neat.
Kanji & Kana Revised Edition - *** - This is a learner's kanji guide. It has 7 kanji per page and up to 5 examples for each kanji. It contains all 1945 jouyou kanji and all the ninmei-you kanji and it has a lengthy introduction to kanji and kana. Unfortuantely, once you get to a certain point, it seems to lose value. I think each kanji should have a little explanation on it as far as word usage or at least a few example sentences. Unfortunately, this has neither.
Subject-Grouped 1016 Kanji in Context - **** - This is another kanji book, but it's very different from the last one. This one starts by dividing kanji into groups such as people, time, business, and sports. At the end of each group, it lists important compounds and then goes on to example sentences for those words. However, the book only includes the kyouiku kanji, the first 1016 kanji taught in Japanese schools, but knowing only those makes you pretty fluent in kanji. In fact, those are the only kanji Japanese are required to know how to both read and write. The rest of the jouyou kanji is recognition only. Again, this is another book I don't use as often as I should.
Beyond Polite Japanese - *** - This book is a sort of dictionary of slang words and colloquial phrases. It's interesting because it not only shows the word and it's kanji, but also in many cases, the origin of the word. The only thing I don't like about the book, though, is that the example sentences seem to use strange English slang and are hard to understand at times and it though it has a wealth of slang phrases, it is not as comprehensive as I wish it was.
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