Basic Japanese - by Samuel E Martin & Eriko Sato (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Learn to speak Japanese in 10 easy lessons--with manga illustrations, engaging exercises, and practical conversations!

This bestselling Japanese textbook is a user-friendly guide for beginners designed for use either in a classroom or self-study. With an emphasis on daily communication and acquiring a working knowledge of simple, often-used Japanese sentences, you can attain basic fluency quickly!

This new edition has been thoroughly updated and expanded to reflect the way the language is actually spoken in Japan today, including essential vocabulary and phrases for modern life--like talking about social media and the internet. Engaging manga illustrations are paired with each dialogue, and a bidirectional dictionary is available in the back of the book.

Ten structured lessons each present a simple four-step method for acquiring basic fluency quickly:

• Basic Sentences: Each lesson begins with a few simple sentences encompassing essential vocabulary and phrases
• Communication Notes: A detailed discussion of each sentence follows to assist you in understanding the underlying structure and how to form new sentences based on the same pattern
• Everyday Conversations: Authentic dialogues with manga illustrations audio recordings show you how people communicate naturally in Japan today through simple, everyday interactions
• Engaging Exercises: Several sets of easy exercises help reinforce your understanding of the key points presented in the lesson
• Online audio recordings by native speakers help with listening comprehension and pronunciation

All audio content is accessible on tuttlepublishing.com

Review Quotes

"This book excels at differentiating really similar concepts, even adding more to the never-ending question of 'What is the difference between [this character] and [this character]?' The vocabulary words are also thematically arranged, usually with illustrations for some words for better memory reinforcement. Pronunciation in the CD tracks actually sounds natural compared to other learning materials" --Japan Reference blog

"Verbs are usually the key to understanding a sentence or part of a text, so it's well worth emphasising them ... If you know these 600 verbs that's really going to help unlock a lot of Japanese for you.'" --How to Japan blog

About the Author

Samuel E. Martin was a master teacher of the Japanese language and a major force in language learning in the postwar U.S. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees in oriental languages from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. in linguistics from Yale University. At Yale he served as chairman of the Department of East and South Asian Languages and Literatures and the Department of Linguistics. He is the author of numerous books and papers on Japanese and Korean, including the definitiveA Reference Grammar of Japanese and A Reference Grammar of Korean.

Eriko Sato is Associate Professor of Japanese and translation studies at the State of University of New York at Stony Brook, where she is also the Director of the Japanese Teacher Education Program. She has authored and co-authored over a dozen books, including Japanese Stories for Language Learners, Essential Japanese Grammar and Learning Japanese Kanji. She has also authored or co-authored Contemporary Japanese, Japanese Demystified, Japanese for Dummies, Complete Japanese Grammar, Japanese Phrases for Dummies, Basic Japanese and My First Japanese Kanji Book.