Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You
- ISBN-10
- 1568366086
- ISBN-13
- 9781568366081
- Category
- Foreign Language Study
- Pages
- 144
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-01-26
- Publisher
- Vertical Inc
- Author
- Jay Rubin
Description
Making Sense of Japanese is the fruit of one foolhardy American's thirty-year struggle to learn and teach the Language of the Infinite. Previously known as Gone Fishin', this book has brought Jay Rubin more feedback than any of his literary translations or scholarly tomes, "even if," he says, "you discount the hate mail from spin-casters and the stray gill-netter." To convey his conviction that "the Japanese language is not vague," Rubin has dared to explain how some of the most challenging Japanese grammatical forms work in terms of everyday English. Reached recently at a recuperative center in the hills north of Kyoto, Rubin declared, "I'm still pretty sure that Japanese is not vague. Or at least, it's not as vague as it used to be. Probably." The notorious "subjectless sentence" of Japanese comes under close scrutiny in Part One. A sentence can't be a sentence without a subject, so even in cases where the subject seems to be lost or hiding, the author provides the tools to help you find it. Some attention is paid as well to the rest of the sentence, known technically to grammarians as "the rest of the sentence." Part Two tackles a number of expressions that have baffled students of Japanese over the decades, and concludes with Rubin's patented technique of analyzing upside-down Japanese sentences right-side up, which, he claims, is "far more restful" than the traditional way, inside-out. "The scholar," according to the great Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume, is "one who specializes in making the comprehensible incomprehensible." Despite his best scholarly efforts, Rubin seems to have done just the opposite. Previously published in the Power Japanese series under the same title and originally as Gone Fishin' in the same series.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Referential Practice: Language and Lived Space Among the Maya
By William F. Hanksgiven form have exactly the same meaning ( e.g. , Timberlake 1982 ) . This is only partly true . ... out there far away ' , but neither * way naáč e ?
-
Longman Dictionary of American English Workbook
By Pearson Education, Inc.Longman Dictionary of American English Workbook
-
Longman Photo Dictionary of American English
By Pearson Education, Pearson Education Staff, Longman StaffExtra writing practice with controlled exercises at the back of the book recycles all the words through word searches, crossword puzzles, matching activities, and so on.
-
A Reference Grammar of Russian
By Alan TimberlakeThis book treats aspects of grammar of Russian, from writing, phonology and morphology to syntax and aspect.
-
Linguistic difficulties adult ESL users encounter in numeracy and mathematics: An outcomes-oriented focus on the themes from the research literature...
By Karen DaltonResearch Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: Pass, Charles Darwin University, language: English, abstract: This literature review undertook a purposeful sample of ...
-
Language and Social Structure in Urban France
By David HornsbyPevalin 2010. 'the european Socio-economic classification: a Prolegomenon', in d. rose & e. Harrison (eds), Social Class in Europe: An Introduction to the European Socio-economic Classification, routledge: London roux, M. 2008.
-
For Your Information 3: High-intermediate Reading Skills
By Karen Lourie Blanchard, Christine Baker RootIt is more dangerous to sell famous works of art than to sell unknown works . 3. The goal of most art thieves is to steal the most valuable work possible . ( continued on the next page ) 4. Only a few legitimate art dealers have ever ...
-
Ready to Write More: From Paragraph to Essay
By Karen Lourie Blanchard, Christine Baker RootMany thought it " bad manners " for a disabled person to appear in public . The idea of a " cripple " pursuing a political career ... His half - hour speech nominating Al Smith for president was cheered for one hour thirteen minutes .
-
Bosnian-English/English-Bosnian Dictionary and Phrasebook
By Susan Kroll, Dževad ZahirovićContains over 1,500 entries in both Bosnian and English along with a pronunciation guide. Includes essential phrases for typical tourist and business situations.
-
Arabic Rhetoric: A Pragmatic Analysis
By Hussein Abdul-Raof8 the nominalised noun (al-maxdar al-mu'awwal),27 as in: – To be quiet is better for you. where the nominalised noun is ( – your silence) that is implicitly understood and derived from ( ) and which acts as the musnad ilaihi whose ...