Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-09-15 rating:
Why did no-one tell me this existed sooner?!
I bought this on the strength of other amazon reviews, and I have to say that I was not in the least disappointed.

Although there aren't any exercises to consolidate what you've just learnt, I've found that watching Japanese TV is more than enough practice. Even after a few chapters, you could at least understand the structure of what's being said in a conversation, even if you didn't know all of the words themselves! The book also goes into great detail on particles and their usage in everyday conversation, and it really pays off. It's a great confidence booster - before I'd just been using Japanese for Busy People, and colloquial Japanese sounded like a completely different language - not so any more!

Each section of text is given first in kanji and kana (but no furigana), then in romaji, then in a word-for-word translation and finally in proper English. Personally, I don't like the omission of furigana, as although I can read the two kana alphabets I don't know many kanji. This means that you have to rely on the romaji translation, which is not as good for your learning as using kana.

The grammatical explanations (which are, for me, the main selling point) are second to none. After each piece of dialogue is a detailed analysis of each part of the sentence. This is especially useful further on in the book, when longer sentences with clauses and subclauses become confusing when you first come across them. Lammers clearly disects them, showing what parts could act as individual sentences, and then how they all fit back together.

I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone if they were just starting out in Japanese - the manga strips serve to illustrate grammatical points more than useful vocabulary, and, as said before, there are no exercises to practice. Japanese for Busy People is a great partner to this book however - although it teaches very formal Japanese, the sentence structure is the same whatever the register, and it provides plenty of useful vocabulary and exercises.

Lammers' book is perfect though for anyone who's got a good grounding in the language and who wants to learn *real* conversational Japanese, and there is nothing else to match it on the market. It should be a crime to study japanese and not have this book, so buy it now!

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review by: date: 2008-02-28 rating:
Teaches the grammatical function of formal and informal Japanese through manga
At first glance you may think that this book teaches only informal Japanese and would be short on grammar. However, this is not the case. There are copious grammar explanantions (but written in a lucid, accesssable style).

The great thing is that everything is linked to the manga. This convinces the learner that this is 'real' and useful Japanese, not just some make-believe version that is only found in textbooks.

What the book does lack is exercises to practice the language presented. It's full of such revelatory stuff, but it's easy to forget without having formalised practice of it. I don't yet know of any classes that use the book, but it would lend itself well to classroom use, with the teacher creating exercises around it that practice the target language.

Used in conjuction with a more regular Japanese textbook, such as the new editions of Japanese For Busy People, this book makes excellent on-the-side reading. What is so great about it is that, if you know a bit of Japanese, the kind of casual speech that you always hear but have never been taught how to use, falls into place - and this book teaches you how to use it properly, with, as I said, lucid explanaions of its grammatical function.

Wayne Lammers grew up in Japan, and I have also experienced his work when I came across his excellent 2003 translation of Taichi Yamada's novel, Strangers.

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review by: bleh_desu date: 2007-03-18 rating:
This delivers what it promises, and more
I love this book!

Firstly, a little about my background: I've been wanting to learn japanese for a good few years now, teaching myself and only getting so far.
I've been going to a night class now for about a year, however I always find it difficult to reconcile what I learn in class with what I hear spoken in movies and Anime. Standard speech is used so infrequently by natives in real life that i think if i wasn't so determined to learn I would have given up long ago.

THIS BOOK promises to introduce you to all basic structures as they appear in published manga. What's more it does it in a structured and easy to comprehend way.

In my first sitting I made it to chapter 6 and was amazed at just how much I had picked up that I could recall hearing about a hundred times in any given anime. What's more, I understood the vast majority of what I'd read, and the daunting task of moving from standard polite speech to REAL japanese as it's spoken was such a small, simple step, I'm annoyed with myself for not doing it sooner.

This book is as amazing as I'd hoped it would be. I can't wait to devour the whole thing. Even if I don't pick something up 100% the first time, there are full, structured translations the whole way through the book to help you get it right. It's also the most enjoyable japanese textbook i've ever read, and i've tried a few.

Since I'm not an absolute beginner, I can not give an accurate opinion on it's suitability for a beginner. However I will say that if you are considering learning japanese as it's spoken in the REAL world, this book is the one for you. HOWEVER, I would strongly reccommend you invest in a dedicated language textbook (japanese for busy people is an excellent choice here), or a part-time class at an adult learning centre.

Buy it! You won't regret it!


review by: aideveloper date: 2005-10-31 rating:
Simply Superb
This is a great book, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone learning, or interested in learning japanese, whether or not you're a fan of manga.

The book is a complete course in basic Japanese taking examples and illustrations from a range of manga (japanese graphic novels). It starts tamely, introducing words like 'ooh' and 'I'll go', but moves through to the end of the book with complete and quite complex blocks of text.

Where this book shines above the hundreds of other Japanese courses available in book form is that everything is linked to pictures, so if you are in the slightest bit visual, you'll associate words with images.

I would say that this book doesn't help you speak japanese without some other input. I've been learning with a conventional tutor to help conversation practice. But time and again the book has taught me stuff that has been very useful. Because manga reflects real japanese as it is spoken, its full of useful idioms and phrases that aren't in dictionaries or some other text-books (which tend to teach a starchy formal version of the language).

The best bit about the book is its frequent reference pages. There are reference blocks on dates, times, numbers and counters, kinship words, and many many more. These have proved more than the value of the book alone: I have quite a few Japanese references, but photocopies of these pages are permanently in the front of my notebook.

I simply can't recommend this book enough. If you look at my other reviews you'll see I rarely give 5 stars: this is very deserving of all 5 of them.

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