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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fremdsprachen
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
Japanese is a wonderful language, very different from European languages. It is also the gateway to the rich culture of the exciting and complex island nation of Japan. Some people get intimidated by the prospect of speaking Japanese--worried that it's just too complex and different--but these fears are unfounded. While you can devote a lifetime to the study of this or any language, picking up the basics of Japanese doesn't require any more than an interest and a willingness to try something new. Japanese For Dummies has everything you need to get off the ground with speaking the language. Author and Professor of Japanese Eriko Sato starts you off with the essentials of grammar and pronunciation, giving you a working sense of the language, before showing you Japanese in action. You'll then explore vocabulary and expressions through dialogues taking place in situations such as: * Introductions and greetings * Eating and drink ing * Shopping * Exploring the town * Talking on the telephone * Asking directions * Getting around * Staying at a hotel You'll also discover social customs, formalities, and manners, from how and when to bow to how to unwrap a present. Whether you simply want to introduce yourself to the Japanese language, say a few words to a neighbor or coworker, or you're planning a major trip or study abroad in Japan, Japanese For Dummies will enable you to get the basics fast and work towards your own goal at your own pace. You'll also find out about: * How to use karaoke to help you learn Japanese * Movies that will introduce you to Japanese culture and language * Learning Japanese the "gourmet" way * When ignoring "no, thank you" shows good manners * Proper table manners * Proper body language * How to sound fluent * And much more! With helpful vocabulary summaries, a mini-dictionary at the end, and an audio CD full of conversations and pronunciations, Japanese For Dummies assumes no prior knowledge of Japanese on your part--providing the perfect guide for a quick-but-thorough, lighthearted-but-not-lightweight introduction to the language.
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Japanese For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
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Table of Contents
Japanese For Dummies®, 2ND EDITION
by Eriko Sato, PhD
Japanese For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012947693
ISBN 978-1-118-13071-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-05385-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-05618-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-21861-7 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Author
Eriko Sato, PhD, is Director of the Teacher Certification Program for Japanese and the Pre-College Japanese Language Program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she has been teaching Japanese language, linguistics, and pedagogy since 1995. She authored the previous edition of Japanese For Dummies (Wiley), as well as Contemporary Japanese: A Textbook for College Students (Tuttle) and Japanese Demystified (McGraw Hill). She also coauthored My First Japanese Kanji Book (Tuttle), Essential Japanese Grammar (Tuttle), and Basic Japanese (Tuttle).
Author’s Acknowledgments
I want to thank all the wonderful editors at Wiley. My heartfelt thanks go to the project editor, Jennifer Tebbe, and the copy editor, Megan Knoll, for their amazing editing skills, professionalism, and kindness. I enjoyed working with them throughout the project. Additionally, I am indebted to the two technical reviewers, Hiroko Chiba and Allen Kidd, who offered numerous valuable suggestions from a variety of viewpoints. Special thanks to Constance Carlisle for creating the audio recordings for this book, and to Wiley’s executive editor, Lindsay Lefevere, and my agent, Grace Freedson, for helping me get engaged in the Japanese For Dummies projects. I also want to thank my students at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and in its Pre-College Japanese Language Program for giving me the most valuable input, inspiration, and insight. Finally, I wish to thank my husband, Yimei, our daughter, Anna, and my family in Japan for their support and love.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
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Executive Editor: Lindsay Sandman Lefevere
Copy Editor: Megan Knoll
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Technical Editors: Hiroko Chiba, Allen Kidd
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Cover Photo: © iStockphoto.com/ David Kerkhoff
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Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies
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Publishing for Technology Dummies
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Introduction
We live in a wonderfully global and amazingly diverse society. Exchanging ideas, products, foods, and friendship across national and cultural boundaries is the key to making our lives richer and more meaningful and peaceful. Besides, traveling abroad is a lot cheaper than it used to be. Grabbing your passport and setting off on an adventure is always fun, but it’s even more fun when you can communicate with people in a different country in their own language.
If Japanese is the language you want to learn, for whatever reason, Japanese For Dummies, 2nd Edition, can help. It provides instant results, plus some of the cultural background behind the language. Now, I’m not saying that you’ll be fluent overnight, but you will gain confidence, have fun, and continue to pick up more and more Japanese so that you can carry on a conversation with your Japanese-speaking co-worker, family member, friend, or neighbor.
About This Book
Japanese For Dummies, 2nd Edition, can help you whether you want to get familiar with Japanese because you’re planning a trip to my island-nation homeland, because you deal with Japanese companies at work, or because your new neighbor is Japanese and you want to be able to say good morning to him or her.(Try ohayō gozaimasu [oh-hah-yohh goh-zah-ee-mah-soo].) I give you the most-important and most-used Japanese words and phrases on subjects as diverse as shopping, money, food, and sports in self-contained chapters and sections.
Simply turn to the topics that interest you the most, play the included audio examples, and start speaking! That’s right, you don’t have to go through this book in order. If I think you may want to know information that’s contained in a different chapter than the one you’re currently reading, I include a handy cross-reference so you can find the additional information when you’re ready for it.
Conventions Used in This Book
I use a few conventions in this book to help your reading go smoothly:
In many places throughout this book, Japanese terms appear in two forms: Japanese scripts (like what you would read if you were in Japan) and the Romanized forms of words (which appear in boldface so you can easily find them in the text). The official term for Romanized Japanese is rōmaji (rohh-mah-jee).
Pronunciations in parentheses and meanings or English equivalents in another pair of parentheses follow the Japanese terms. Note that meanings and English equivalents appear in italics.
Verb conjugations (lists that show you the basic forms of a verb) are given in tables in this order: the dictionary form, the negative (nai-) form, the stem form (or the form before the polite suffix -masu), and the te-form. You find Japanese scripts in the first column, rōmaji in the second column, and pronunciations in the third column. Here’s a sample conjugation of the verb taberu (tah-beh-roo) (to eat):
Japanese Script
Rōmaji
Pronunciation
食べる
taberu
tah-beh-roo
食べない
tabenai
tah-beh-nah-ee
食べ（ます）
tabe(masu)
tah-beh(-mah-soo)
食べて
tabete
tah-beh-teh
Keep in mind that Japanese verbs don’t conjugate like English verbs. You can’t find exact counterparts for English verb forms such as infinitives, gerunds, and participles. In addition, you don’t conjugate Japanese verbs in terms of the person and number, so taberu can mean I eat, you eat, he eats, she eats, and they eat. This difference may take a little getting used to, but it should make your verb-learning life a little easier.
To help you remember the most important new words and see the language in context, this book includes some special elements to reinforce the Japanese terms you’re studying:
Talkin’ the Talk dialogues: Hearing actual Japanese conversations is the best way to learn Japanese, which is why I include many dialogues under the “Talkin’ the Talk” heading in this book. These exchanges show you the Japanese words in rōmaji, their pronunciations, and the English translations so that you can see how the language is actually used. All Talkin’ the Talk dialogues are accompanied by audio recordings so that you can hear and pick up the natural intonation and rhythm that are essential in conversational interactions.
Words to Know blackboards: Here’s where you find key words and phrases from the Talkin’ the Talk dialogues.
Fun & Games activities: Located at the end of chapters, these amusing activities help reinforce the vocabulary you practice in each chapter. You can find the solutions to these activities in Appendix D.
This book also features compact yet convenient mini-dictionaries — both Japanese-English and English-Japanese — in Appendix A. They include only very basic vocabulary words, mainly content words such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. For your convenience, I mark the conjugation class of the verbs: u for u-verbs, ru for ru-verbs, and irr for irregular verbs. Slightly irregular u-verbs are specified as u (irr). In the English-Japanese mini-dictionary, I also designate verbs with (v.) because some English verbs also function as nouns. Last but certainly not least, I mark the type of adjectives: i for i-type adjectives and na for na-type adjectives. A few i-type adjectives with minor irregularities are specified as i (irr).
Speaking of language quirks, you should know that English and Japanese sometimes express the same concept in very different ways. And Japanese has many words and phrases that you can’t translate into English at all. In this book, I want you to focus on what is actually said (the content and intended meaning) rather than how it’s said. So instead of giving you a literal translation, I give you a nonliteral, natural English translation. For example, the phrase yoroshiku (yoh-roh-shee-koo) can be literally translated as appropriately, but the phrase really means pleased to meet you if you say it when meeting someone new. This book gives the nonliteral, pleased-to-meet-you type translations (sometimes with the more literal translation for reference).
Your exploration of Japanese will also show you different ways of looking at the world of language because Japanese doesn’t contain the same type of grammar items as European languages do. For example, Japanese doesn’t have equivalents of English articles like a and the. Some verbs in English correspond to adjectives in Japanese. For example, the verb to want is best represented by the Japanese adjective hoshii, so be ready to see some mismatch in the part-of-speech categories. And Japanese doesn’t have a singular/plural distinction, such as dog and dogs, either. The information about specificity and numbers are expressed in very different ways. Also, Japanese sometimes has linguistic systems that European languages don’t have. For example, Japanese speech styles clearly indicate degrees of respect or familiarity within conversational contexts.
What You’re Not to Read
Although I hope you read everything in this book, you certainly don’t have to read the sidebars (the gray-shaded boxes you see sprinkled throughout the book). They contain information that’s interesting but not essential if you just want to be able to speak Japanese.
Foolish Assumptions
To write this book, I had to work off of some assumptions about you. I’m thinking that
You don’t know much Japanese, except maybe for a few words like karate and sushi.
You’re not planning on taking a language-proficiency test for Japanese next month, and you’re not planning on becoming a professional Japanese translator in the near future. You just want to be able to communicate basic information in Japanese and get to know the Japanese language.
You don’t have time to spend hours and hours memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules.
You want to have fun in addition to learning Japanese.
How This Book Is Organized
Japanese For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is divided into five parts. Each part has a specific focus or function. Here’s how they break down.
Part I: Getting Started
This part provides you with essentials of the Japanese language. Chapter 1 gives you a taste of Japanese phrases so you get a feel for what you find throughout the book. Chapter 2 lays out the basics of the Japanese sounds and writing systems, and Chapter 3 compactly provides the essential elements of Japanese grammar. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 offer Japanese words and phrases you can’t live without: daily-life expressions, numbers, and words and phrases you use in your household.
Part II: Japanese in Action
This part gets you going and engaged in actions. It provides Japanese words and phrases that you can use for meeting new people (Chapter 7); asking directions (Chapter 8); doing your job (Chapter 12); and engaging in your favorite activities such as dining out (Chapter 9), shopping (Chapter 10), exploring the town (Chapter 11), and enjoying recreational activities (Chapter 13).
Part III: Japanese on the Go
Time to forget about your daily routines and the activities you do in the comfort of your own town and go on a trip! This part lets you plan a trip (Chapter 14), deal with money in a foreign land (Chapter 15), and choose the right transportation method (Chapter 16) and the right place to stay (Chapter 17). You also get tips and vocabulary on handling emergencies while you’re away (Chapter 18).
Part IV: The Part of Tens
This part is the collection of simple phrases and facts that I want you to know and remember right away. Here you can find ten ways to pick up Japanese quickly (Chapter 19), ten things you should never say in front of Japanese folks (Chapter 20), ten favorite Japanese expressions (Chapter 21), and ten phrases that make you sound like a native Japanese-speaker (Chapter 22).
Part V: Appendixes
This part is home to helpful references such as a very convenient mini- dictionary (Appendix A), verb tables that show you the conjugation patterns of all types of regular verbs and most of the irregular verbs (Appendix B), a list of all the accompanying audio tracks (Appendix C), and the answers to the Fun & Games exercises at the end of the chapters (Appendix D).
Icons Used in This Book
To help you find certain types of information quickly, I’ve placed some icons throughout the book. Here are the six icons to keep an eye out for:
If you’re interested in information and advice about culture and travel, look for these icons. They draw your attention to interesting tidbits about Japan and Japanese culture.
If you understand grammar, you can create an infinite number of sentences, so I use this icon to point out discussions of grammar facts.
The audio recordings that come with this book give you the opportunity to listen to real Japanese speakers so that you can get a better understanding of what Japanese sounds like. This icon marks the spots where audio recordings are available (for the basic sounds in Chapter 2 and all Talkin’ the Talk dialogues). You can find these audio tracks on the accompanying CD, or if you have a digital version of this book, you can access the tracks via the link in the Table of Contents.
To ensure that you don’t forget information important to the language, this icon serves as a reminder, just like a string tied around your finger.
This icon highlights suggestions that can make learning Japanese easier.
This icon can keep you from making embarrassing or really foolish mistakes.
Where to Go from Here
You can read as much or as little as you want of this book and the chapters in it. Decide what topic you’re interested in, consult the index or table of contents to find the proper section, and quickly discover what you need to know to speak about that topic in Japanese. Of course, if you’re looking to get a foundation in the basics, I recommend turning to Chapters 2 and 3 first. These chapters contain the fundamentals of Japanese pronunciation, writing systems, and grammar. Read them now and then refer to them later if you get hung up on how to read Japanese scripts or build sentences.
Well, what are you waiting for? Head for the chapter that interests you or listen to the included audio examples. And make sure to use your favorite Japanese phrases when you hang out with your friends or family. If you think your family probably won’t understand what you say, teach them Japanese. With a little dedication, you’ll be able to confidently answer Hai! (hah-ee!) (Yes!) when people ask Nihongo wa hanasemasu ka. (nee-hohn-goh wah hah-nah-seh-mah-soo kah.) (Can you speak Japanese?)
Part I
Getting Started
In this part . . .
Part I welcomes you to the Japanese language. Here, I give you the basic facts on Japanese — what the Japanese sounds sound like, what the Japanese scripts look like, and how to put Japanese words together appropriately. Then I provide you with some Japanese words and phrases you simply can’t live without: daily-life expressions, numbers, and words and phrases used in your household. Jā, hajimemashō! (jahh, hah-jee-meh-mah-shohh!) (Let’s start!).
Chapter 1
Japanese in a Nutshell
In This Chapter
Dipping your toes into Japanese writing and grammar
Working with simple expressions and basic numbers
Exploring Japanese at home, at work, at play, and abroad
Welcome to Japanese! Now that you’ve decided to learn this intriguing language, I’m sure you’re eager to find out as much as you can as quickly as you can. After all, you probably have co-workers, friends, neighbors, and others to impress with your newfound language skills. Well, here’s your chance to dive into Japanese. This chapter offers you a mini-preview of what you can find throughout Japanese For Dummies, 2nd Edition.
Discovering Basic Japanese Sounds and Script
Japanese sounds are pretty easy to pronounce. For one thing, Japanese has only five basic vowels: a (ah), i (ee), u (oo), e (eh), and o (oh). In addition, you don’t see a long string of consonants before or after a vowel, unlike in Russian or Polish. You just have to pay attention to a handful of strange consonants, such the Japanese r, which makes a sound somewhere between the English l and r. You can pronounce basic sounds in Japanese along with the audio recordings in Chapter 2.
Japanese writing, on the other hand, can be confusing because Japanese scripts don’t look at all like Western alphabets. The Japanese scripts consist of two sets of kana (kah-nah) — phonetic symbols for Japanese syllables — and about 2,000 kanji (kahn-jee) characters, which are Chinese characters adapted for Japanese. If you just want to learn how to speak Japanese, you may want to skip focusing on these Japanese scripts and use rōmaji (rohh-mah-jee), the Romanized spellings of Japanese words. However, getting used to the Japanese scripts is a good idea, especially if you plan to use your Japanese skills to travel. If you can recognize some of the Japanese scripts, you can get around in a Japanese town more easily because all street signs are written in only the Japanese scripts.
Another advantage of being able to recognize the Japanese scripts, especially kana, is that you can avoid reading Japanese like English. For example, the Japanese word that means bamboo is take. As an English speaker, you may have an urge to read take as teh-ee-koo because you know the English word but the Japanese pronunciation of this wordis tah-keh. In this case, the may mislead you, but the , wouldn’t because your existing knowledge in English can’t interfere. Chapter 2 shows all characters and some representative characters for your reference.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
