How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese: A Vocabulary Builder

Rating:
Summary: For professional users of Japanese
Review: As a longtime student and translator of the Japanese language, I would like to see more books like this on the market, in contrast to the sea of books that focus on Japanese slang, foreign loanwords, and profanity. Japanese academics and professionals who operate in an English-speaking environment don't expect to get a free pass on difficult English vocabulary. "How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese" seems to be based on the premise that foreign speakers of Japanese should also be able to handle advanced terminology.

Historically, native Japanese speakers have been amazed at a foreigner who can manage even a passable sentence or two in their language. Ten years ago, it was not uncommon for Japanese to heap praise on an American visitor to Tokyo for correctly ordering lunch without resorting to English. Americans were even complimented for knowing how to say "konnichiwa" and "ohayoo gozaimasu."

Today, the bar has been raised substantially, and a reasonable comprehension of professional and academic terminology is needed in order to be taken seriously as a foreign speaker of Japanese. This is especially true if you intend to rely on your Japanese skills in a professional context. "How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese" can help the intermediate student to polish her skills to the point where Japanese speakers will regard her as an adult speaker of their language.

The book is laid out in a convenient thematic format, so you can focus on the areas which are most relevant to your own needs and interests (science, law, etc.) There are enough example sentences to give you a sense of the context in which the specialized vocabulary items are used. Nonetheless, this book does assume an intermediate to advanced grasp of Japanese, so it may be a bit too much for first-year students; and the book doesn't offer much in the way of grammatical instruction.

However, this is an extremely valuable resource for intermediate students who want to ease into more complex subject matters in Japanese. After working diligently through this book, the student will have the appetite and confidence necessary to tackle the publications that Japanese professionals themselves read.

Rating:
Summary: A quick way to learn vocaulary outside your own specialty
Review: I like this book because it groups a lot of the basic vocabulary you need about specialized fields. You don't have to go searching through a dictionary to pick it all up. There is maybe one field where I feel fairly confident, but most of the rest I'm not that interested in and only want the vocabulary because I absolutely need it to listen to a lecture, read a book or the newspaper, or just talk to someone who I know will bring up a certain topic because it's in the news or it is their pet pieve.

The book is also useful because the author tries now and then to give hints on differences between certain words or groups of words. That's something you will definitely not find in a dictionary.

If you're a beginner, you can just read the commentary and look at the lists and pick up what you need, not try to memorize everything. If you're more advanced you can read the sample sentences. I definitely don't agree with those who say if you're intermediate or advanced, you can go out and read the books themselves, and don't need a book like this. I don't want to be reading many Japanese science books, but I still want to know how to say chemistry. The easier it is, the better, and this book does make it easier.

Rating:
Summary: Waste of Monetary Funds
Review: This book will teach you how to sound pedantic and insincere in Japanese. It is basically a list of buzz words that stupid people throw around in the states to sound smart. It teaches absolutely no grammar, so you will spit out words like "radioactive waste" in broken, incorrect Japanese.