Overview

This is a concise and userfriendly book for learning polite spoken Japanese or written Japanese. Respect language-the special style of polite spoken or written Japanese-is involved almost every exchange of Japanese between one person and another, including the simplest phrases of greeting. An understanding of its forms is therefore essential to any serious student of the Japanese language. This programmed course is carefully designed to teach the basic and correct forms which the learner should master for his or her own use, by first looking at the various typical situations to see when respect should and should not be shown in Japanese, and then going on to see how respect is expressed in special forms of speech. In this way the learner is shown how to identify the type of respect for used, the person to whom respect is being shown, and the equivalent form in colloquial language. The insights into both Japanese culture and language will help any student or businessperson traveling to Japan or speaking Japanese on a regular basis. Understand which situations require respect language. Identify the most suitable grammar, honorifics, and more for a wide range of situations. Selftests to help yo master what you learn. Valuable quickreference appendices.

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9784805309766

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Reviews

In the end, this is not a book you should sit down and read all at once. Like the book itself suggests, if there is a section you are interested in, you should read that section and save the rest for a later date. And one read through will not magically enable to you be a master at keigo. However, as far as English language keigo lessons go, it's really in depth and covers just about everything an intermediate Japanese language learner could ever want to know. -- Tofugu

It is impossible to speak fluent Japanese without speaking polite Japanese, and it is difficult to speak polite Japanese without this book. --Mary Kennedy, Decatur College

In the end, this is not a book you should sit down and read all at once. Like the book itself suggests, if there is a section you are interested in, you should read that section and save the rest for a later date. And one read through will not magically enable to you be a master at keigo. However, as far as English language keigo lessons go, it's really in depth and covers just about everything an intermediate Japanese language learner could ever want to know. If you can get past the strange formatting I believe this book can be very useful. -- Tofugu

Author Information

P.G. O'Neill's books on the Japanese language are considered standards in the subject, and include An Introduction to Written Japanese as well as Respect Language in Modern Japanese.

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