WEBmikey: Japanese in MangaLand Vol 2 / Marc Bernabe : 3 of 5

Latest Flickr


Japanese in MangaLand Vol 2 / Marc Bernabe : 3 of 5
5.01.2008 10:15 PM \| Link	I can't believe I read this first volume of this series back in 2006, and I just now finally finished the second volume (guess I was really busy studying for the JLPT)! I really like the way this book concisely presents Japanese grammar - sometimes it has to bend the truth a little to avoid mentioning the many confusing exceptions that are lurking nearby, but I love the way it spells out grammar rules with confidence anyway. The selling point for this series is the manga examples, but truthfully they are the least helpful part of the book (but still fun to study). Even less helpful are the cultural/conversation chapters, which are just lists of sentences like a typical phrase book, which is pretty boring. The other weird thing about this book is it was originally written in Spanish, so this English version is actually a translation, which may be the reason some of the sentences are annoyingly full of complex grammar jargon. For example, "Potentiality and prohibition expressions in Japanese are not excessively hard to assimilate due to the relative simplicity of the verbal conjugations" is an actual sentence in the book! On the positive side, I really learned a few things that stuck with me, such as the origin of the crazy -chau conjugation, which is really a slang version of -te shimau (and now it finally makes sense!). There's also a nice set of "giving and receiving" diagrams (you can never have enough of those, trust me!). So even though this series has its drawbacks, I still want to get the third volume sometime soon! I wouldn't really recommend it for a total beginner, but it's been very useful for me as a refresher, with great exposure to many areas of the Japanese language. Labels: books, japanese


Blogger \| HaloScan \| Levelfield