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[Yawarakaijin]

Thanks for your time everyone. I was wondering if anyone could help me out with some studying material. In particular, I'm looking for study material that clearly correlates the differences in grammatical structure between English and Japanese.

For example.

A.) This is the Present Perfect Continuous
B.) This is how the Present Perfect Continuous is expressed in Japanese.
or
There is no direct equivalent but this is how it is expressed.

Nearly all the books I find on Japanese consist of, this is how to count in Japanese, this is how we conjugate verbs and this is how S.V.O is S.O.V Good up to a point but I'm trying to learn how to convey more complex ideas in Japanese and, for me, this method of presentation would be helpful.

Thanks for any help you might be able to offer.

[Quibby84]

This is what I am having trouble with and everytime I ask someone how to make a certain sentence they are like "well you could say 'nani nani' or 'nani nani'" (they name several different ways).
One lady told me that you always put the main subject in the beginning and the verb at the end, she said all the rest in the middle is kind of just stuck there or is in order of importance...but I hear sentences said different ways (maybe without the verb at the end or subject at the beginning)...so I have no clue. I am interested to know if there is such a book...

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

You can buy a really thick book on Japanese linguistics in English in Kinokuniya, at least in the Shinjuku Takeshima Times Square store.

It rips apart the language far better than any study book, so if you use that type of thing combined with study books, that may help. You can also buy books on grammar

And the reason why it's taught that way is because Japanese grammatical structures don't really match English ones (and each tense and aspects in English covers many different things- we refer to it as a different use of the aspect - like when you learned French you could learn that the Imparfait is used for DWURM- description, was/were...ing/used to.../repetitive actions/mental and physical attributes. That's NOT when the simple past is used in English, but that's the corresponding tense because le passe compose is a compund tense that corres[onds in form to present perfect, but in use to simple past. Then there are other tenses in french which we translate, but don't really have direct translations into English). Japanese isn't an Indo-European language, the basic sentence isn't SVO, and it's an agglutinative language so that things usually don't directly correspond should be expected. Also, some uses of a particular stucture in English may be easy to do in Japanese, but others crazy, crazy complicated and so normally books don't want to present it all at the same time (your head would explode).

You can get some of the basics by looking up Japanese language in Wikipedia, but if you look through intermediate and advanced Japanese grammar dictionaries, you'll see notions like grammatical tenses aren't stressed in the language. The reason is that the attempt to try and translate grammatical tenses into gramatical tense rules for Japanese (when both perfect and continuous aspects are marked byu the same verb endings) will make for some strange, strange Japanese.

And a big chunk of the reason why Japanese people do so poorly at English is exactly the same reason- they learn English by being taught in Japanese grammar rules, but we DO look at things in term of tense and aspect more than they do (for example, I don't think you would say I live in X town without using the continuous aspect).

I think a good way to go about it is to go slowly at first to get a basic understanding of the rules of the language, then approach each language on it's own terms.

So yeah, maybe a good way to go about it might be to actually buy a regular JHS or SHS series of textbooks, because they give Japanese translations of the English grammar points (you will need a kanji dictionary if you don't have one), and divide it up so that there's a translation for the each use of the grammatical structure as you go along (you almost never find a multi-use grammatical structure in English that will have a corresponding multi-use structure in Japanese, and vice versa), but note that it can result in presenting fairly difficult things in Japanese before fairly easy ones (obviously 1st year JHS isn't going to be very useful unless you're at a very beginning stage- they learn potential 'can', simple present and pres continuous. They don't even learn the last of the nominative pronouns until almost half-way thorugh the year).

[southofreality]

I used the Japanese For Busy People series for my first year of study. Books 1 - 3 cover most of the basic grammar you'll need for everyday life. The explanations are clear and there are some nice examples.

To understand each grammar point thoroughly, you could do really well by getting copies of A Dictionary Of Basic Japanese Grammar and A Dictionary Of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, both published by The Japan Times. They have been the most valuable books I've used to study grammar.

[Yawarakaijin]

Thanks for the info.

[markle]

Once when I was eager to study Japanese seriously and I still may I got this book "Making sense of Japanese:What the textbooks don't tell you" by Jay Rubin, it might help.

[fluffyhamster]

I love the bit about the recuperation center on the jacket of the latest incarnation of Rubin's work:

[mspxlation]

Check out "Japanese the Easy Way" in the Barron's Educational Series (not to be confused with their other books on Japanese). It's meant as a supplementary set of explanations and exercises for people who already know some Japanese or are already studying out of a different textbook or with a teacher who isn't good at explaining grammar.

It's in romaji, but the author told me that this is only because the publisher insisted on it.

[markle]

[mmike]

Speaking of Barron's, I found the aptly-named Japanese Grammar to be a huge lifesaver. It's a little red book, perfect for reading on the train. It makes a good idle study guide because it contains a huge amount of information on conjugation, particles, and gives you an in-depth look without being too hard to get into. It's also in Romaji.

It's handy because it'll show you more advanced ways to express yourself, though it's overly polite. For example, it never uses watashi, only the uber-polite watakushi, which you'd get laughed at for using in almost any situation. In the Kansai region, anyways. It also may briefly mention something that is actually very very common, so it's hard to tell which is the best way. However, the forms it has are necessary for advancing anywhere and it gives a good foundation.

I found just casually browsing it over and over again eventually stuck the forms in my head, rather than using a sequential "memorize and move on" approach. It's also cheap.

[tanuki]

I too recommend Jay Rubin's book.

And as South of Reality suggested, the Basic & Intermediate Dictionaries are probably the closest to what you're looking for, Yawarakaijin.

Yeah, I know that what you're looking for is something that moves from L1-->L2, but the two grammar books mentioned:

(a) are pretty darn comprehensive

and

(b) have a terrific appendix which focuses on functional expressions (e.g. how to talk about possibility, how to issue commands, etc.); you can use THIS section as the starting point for what I imagine is your intended project. If you really are interested in this kinda gear, then you'll easily get lost in these books for huge chunks of time!

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful and offer something that directly deals with what you're after!

Best of luck with your search,
Tanuki