Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You

Rating:
Summary: A great treasure for intermediate students.
Review: Having been studying Japanese on and off for, oh, nine years now, I have learned that not all educational tools and methods work for everybody. People have their own way to learn languages, and in my case the straight-up textbook approach never entirely succeeded. I lived and studied in Japan for several years, and that helped in conversation and in terms of immersion. I have purchased everything from particle guides and Kanji dictionaries and even children's books to help my study, and all of them help in ways, but it is a very piecemeal way to learn.

And I guess that is how it is when learning languages. Only the true geniuses of language can grasp these things in a ready and total fashion. And unfortunately for me, this piecemeal approach left me missing things from my study of the language. And then Jay Rubin stepped in.

Jay Rubin knows the Japanese language. He teaches it, and is a translator of Japanese literature. (Most famously he translated into English Murakami Haruki's "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" and "Norwegian Wood", as well as writing a biography of Murakami.) To steal a line from Lawrence of Arabia, "He knows his stuff."

And so it is that Rubin decided to stuff all that stuff into a book for those of us who struggle with the more delicate grammatical issues of the Japanese language. And he does so with brilliance and wit and ease of use that I have yet to have seen surpassed. "Making Sense of Japanese" is indeed a precious little gem in my collection of Japanese learning aids that fills in so many holes in the facade of my shoddy language capacity. For instance:

Wa and Ga - Never before has there been a more thorough and easy to remember explanation of the delicate differences between these two particles. They are a great bane to learners of Japanese, and Rubin dedicates 20 pages to truly making sense of them.

The Myth of the Subjectless Sentence - and how it is a true myth. Which is followed by a really nifty look into the differences in pronoun use in Japanese and English.

Receiving and Giving - and all the verbs that pertain to those actions.

Causitives and Passives - and how they combine at times.

Tame - Rubin succinctly explains the two forms of "tame" and gives examples.

Tsumori - and how it too has a double use.

And so much more! All told in a very lucid style and sharp wit that is sorely missing from most study guides. The final part of the book is dedicated to taking a very complex sentence in Japanese and breaking it apart and showing exactly how it forms a full statement. To some this may seem a little tedious and an over-indulgence in explaining in English what is fundamentally the properties of another language, but I have always felt in my studies that most texts and aids are lacking in easy to understand explanations. If you get frustrated with what seem to be overly simple and/or boring explanations of some very important grammar elements of Japanese, this little book is a marvel. But like any other language guide, these lessons must be studied to have impact. Though Rubin makes it very easy to read these passages over and over.

Rating:
Summary: A great treasure for intermediate students.
Review: Having been studying Japanese on and off for, oh, nine years now, I have learned that not all educational tools and methods work for everybody. People have their own way to learn languages, and in my case the straight-up textbook approach never entirely succeeded. I lived and studied in Japan for several years, and that helped in conversation and in terms of immersion. I have purchased everything from particle guides and Kanji dictionaries and even children's books to help my study, and all of them help in ways, but it is a very piecemeal way to learn.

And I guess that is how it is when learning languages. Only the true geniuses of language can grasp these things in a ready and total fashion. And unfortunately for me, this piecemeal approach left me missing things from my study of the language. And then Jay Rubin stepped in.

Jay Rubin knows the Japanese language. He teaches it, and is a translator of Japanese literature. (Most famously he translated into English Murakami Haruki's "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" and "Norwegian Wood", as well as writing a biography of Murakami.) To steal a line from Lawrence of Arabia, "He knows his stuff."

And so it is that Rubin decided to stuff all that stuff into a book for those of us who struggle with the more delicate grammatical issues of the Japanese language. And he does so with brilliance and wit and ease of use that I have yet to have seen surpassed. "Making Sense of Japanese" is indeed a precious little gem in my collection of Japanese learning aids that fills in so many holes in the facade of my shoddy language capacity. For instance:

Wa and Ga - Never before has there been a more thorough and easy to remember explanation of the delicate differences between these two particles. They are a great bane to learners of Japanese, and Rubin dedicates 20 pages to truly making sense of them.

The Myth of the Subjectless Sentence - and how it is a true myth. Which is followed by a really nifty look into the differences in pronoun use in Japanese and English.

Receiving and Giving - and all the verbs that pertain to those actions.

Causitives and Passives - and how they combine at times.

Tame - Rubin succinctly explains the two forms of "tame" and gives examples.

Tsumori - and how it too has a double use.

And so much more! All told in a very lucid style and sharp wit that is sorely missing from most study guides. The final part of the book is dedicated to taking a very complex sentence in Japanese and breaking it apart and showing exactly how it forms a full statement. To some this may seem a little tedious and an over-indulgence in explaining in English what is fundamentally the properties of another language, but I have always felt in my studies that most texts and aids are lacking in easy to understand explanations. If you get frustrated with what seem to be overly simple and/or boring explanations of some very important grammar elements of Japanese, this little book is a marvel. But like any other language guide, these lessons must be studied to have impact. Though Rubin makes it very easy to read these passages over and over.

Rating:
Summary: Explains the seemingly unexplainable
Review: This book by Jay Rubin humorously explains some of the most seemingly esoteric aspects of the Japanese language to the intermediate student of Japanese. Some of the most useful concepts that Rubin explains are ha and ga, giving and receiving, passive, causative, hodo, and many more. After a casual reading of this book I felt that certain aspects of the Japanese language seemed to make more sense than ever before. I would recommend this book to any third year student of Japanese.

Rating:
Summary: As necessary as air
Review: This book is one of the most helpful take on the explaining the Japanese language I've ever read. The humour keeps things interesting and prevents you from putting it away even when you reach a section that is difficult to understand.

However, if you are an Asian and speak your mother tongue fluently, this book has some areas that are probably already obvious to you. Things like invisible subjects are frequently used in Asian languages and you have probably mastered it subconsciously since you were five. That is not to say that the book is not useful, but it is written with English native speakers in mind.

One small complain about the book: I have been reading hiragana and kanji right from the start of learning Japanese, so reading romanji is somewhat of a pain. I had an easier time reading the forewords by the author's Japanese wife than the romanji examples he gave. It will be helpful if the examples can include both hiragana/kanji and romanji versions.

Well despite the tiny flaw, I can say that this book IS going to be necessary. A lot of Japanese teacher make up their own explanations of certain grammar components that might seem logical at first, but later on you will be confused when new things are taught that SEEM to contradict the previous rules. This book will clear up all the things that your teacher WILL mess up. One fine example: my teacher told us that "n-da" is simply to add more emotions to the statement. Well turns out it wasn't that simple.

Get this book. You will need it.

Rating:
Summary: There's more than grammar to a language
Review: This is a precious little book.

Most of what I'd say has been said in reviews above, so I'll just add that the great value of this book turns out so much more if (like me) you're studying Japanese on textbooks written for English-speaking students, but English isn't your own mother tongue.

For sure, the content of the book is very useful by itself, but for me it had the additional benefit of letting me better understand my English-speaking fellow students (and maybe even teachers') common myths and difficulties with the subject!

The point is that those very aspects of the language unavoidably tend to be either less-well- or over-explained in English textbooks, sometimes leaving you wondering what's it all about...

All that imho of course! ;-)

P.S. I'd recommend this book to essentially anyone, not necessariliy "intermediate level" students only like hinted in other reviews. The topics are very general in nature and clearly presented with examples, you can and should read it through at a very early stage in your study!

Rating:
Summary: A must have
Review: This is a truly fantastic book. The twenty or so pages devoted to the use and misuse of 'wa' and 'ga' are worth the price alone. Hell, the two pages on Kanji are worth the price alone.

Seriously, every student of Japanese needs this book once they have mastered the basics and are starting to really use the language. If I had to hazard a guess as to when it would be appropriate, I would say second year students would benefit greatly from it.



Rating:
Summary: One of the Best!
Review: This is an excellent book! Not only interesting but informative. I would like to inform you in case you didn't see it in the reveiw this EXACT book is also called Gone Fishin' ISBN 4770016565. So the people charging double what its worth are ripping you off.

Rating:
Summary: Totally deserving of these 5 stars
Review: When I ordered this book, I hadn't read it, or even seen the cover. I just picked it up because I'm anxious to learn more daily Japanese conversation. While this book didn't teach me the slang and modern speech I'm wanting to learn, I did find it to be extremely useful. I'm not finished yet, but this book has so far been very informative and easy to read. The writing is excellent, and it's entertaining to read. It explains how "subjectless" sentences work and how to use "wa" and "ga" properly, amomg other things of course. If you're a student of Japanese, and you want to actually understand the logic of the language instead of simply memorizing vocabulary, this book is a must-have.