A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar by Michio Tsutsui - A Dictionary You'll Get Lost In

A Dictionary You'll Get Lost In
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is basically intended for 1st and 2nd year students and teachers of Japanese for whom the grammatical explanations from textbooks were not good enough. One common complaint of language textbooks is that they tend to be exhaustive in drilling a small amount of grammar. This approach seems to be favored by foreign language departments at universities, but has the inherent flaw that it withholds some of the most interesting grammar until the second or third semester, thus leaving beginning students crippled when they want to say certain things.

What this book does have:
Comprehensive dictionary of "grammatical words." This includes, but is not limited to: particles, qualifiers, special noun/particle constructions, verbs that give other words a different meaning when used in a certain pattern, and verb endings. The reason I love this book is that it's actually readable, and is not necessarily just a reference. Look up some obscure usage of "o," and you may find yourself reading about the various nuances of using the "o ~ ni naru" construction or learn a new word in "owaru". There are more than 500 pages devoted to this sort of thing, and each entry comes with clear, and detailed explanations, as well as 1-4 (avg. 2) pages of examples and further elaboration. Particles with multiple meanings are given multiple entries to give each usage ample space to be explained.

There are also about 100 pages of basic grammar contained in the introduction and the appendicies. This includes basic sentence construction (incl. detail about word order tendencies, the parts of a Japanese sentence, pronouns, polite speech and a variety of other subjects) and ensures that the reader will have not just a basic, but a solid fundamental understanding of Japanese grammar. Additionally, there are appendices for how to use certain words that take irregular particles, counters and how to generally predict the irregular forms that a given counter takes, which I found helpful. Each Japanese word in this book is written in romaji, but is also accompanied with its corresponding Kanji, which is also nice.

What this book is not:
This book is not a short overview of grammar, but nor is it a complete instructional method in itself. It's intended for people who are already learning to speak Japanese either in a college course, from self study or whatever method, but want more detail about grammar.

One thing that disappointed me was that I thought I'd find verb conjugation charts with explanations on how to use each conjugation. Most textbooks tend to only teach grammar little by little, and even then all the usages may not be listed, so finding everything in the same place would be a plus. This book lists many verb endings alphabetically, including many of the derived ones like "~nakereba naranai" which means "have to/must (+ verb)" but is derived from the "if (I) don't ~" construction; however, skimming through 500 pages of alphabetical entries which may or may not be verb endings is not what I'd call a convenient verb conjugation chart.

I'd like to mark a point off for being a grammar book without a convenient explanation of verb conjugation, but I know of no other book that has such comprehensive examples and explanations on the other topics all in one place. Definitely a must buy for every student of the language.

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