Japanese Core Words and Phrases: Things You Can't Find in a Dictionary

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Summary: A Great List of Expressions that are not in Dictionaries
Review: I feel that my comprehension of written Japanese has improved as a result of reading this book. By reading novels in Japanese I found out how insufficient most dictionaries and grammar references are with regard to the Japanese I often found in novels. Thus, I was quite pleased when I found this book because it seemed to cover a lot of the words that I had been unsuccessfully searching for in dictionaries. This book is broken down into two sections: gdemonstrative pronounsh and gidiomatic expression.h Under each section there is a list of phrases; each phrase covered receives over a paragraph long explanation, as well as numerous example sentences. Furthermore, I feel that this bookfs best point is the selection of words covered. Thus, I feel that this book is a good value because you will likely not find the same expressions in other resources. Also, I think that this book has particular value to those students who want to start to gain confidence reading Japanese literature.

Rating:
Summary: Wish I'd bought this sooner!
Review: This book really is excellent in every way. I'm an intermediate/advanced japanese student, although I mainly study on my own these days. Because of that, I needed something to teach me some of the little things that are difficult to find in a book, yet are a big part of the language, and this book does that. It has a HUGE list of Japanese idioms, set phrases, and similar grammatical tools that are absolutely integral to the Japanese language, and I often found myself going "Oh yah, that's the kind of thing I would say in English, but never thought to learn it in Japanese!"

Basically, if you want to take a break from the textbooks and learn some really good fundamental and natural Japanese grammar, this book is for you. For the price, you simply can't beat it. I also HIGHLY recommend "Basic Connections:Making Your Japanese Flow." With those two books, you'll have enough info to last you a long time!

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Summary: A little more advanced than I was looking for
Review: This book seems quite useful, and is well-indexed... but this is really for intermediate to advanced students of Japanese. To use this book, you should be able to read some Kanji, and already have a good knowledge of Japanese sentence structure and a reasonable vocabulary.