A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar

All the basics are here - a must-buy for fans of the Japanese language. The structures covered here are those often used in daily conversion and for basic communication. If you want to know how Japanese people put sentences together, this is a good book to read or keep as reference.

Despite my utter laziness in going to get the book from the post office after Royal Mail missing delivery, I am absolutely thrilled to say that it was sent much earlier than I expected. Long shipping time from Japan but the book was extremely well packaged, engulfed in bubble wrap and snugly tucked into something suitable for its size. No deformation of the book itself, no creases on the paper, it's in perfect condition! This book is a beast. It's much larger than I initially thought it might be and after a good couple of hours perusing several concepts that I had a little trouble grasping, I can confidently say that the amount of detail in this book is perfect for filling those gaps of knowledge that tend to crop up whenever your knowledge is limited to more Western text books. Though it is a dictionary it offers plenty of in situ examples and has a very clear format. As an English speaker, it also helps being able to look for particles/grammatical tools alphabetically via their romaji transcription, and although the feature can seem obvious, the shaded degradation to indicate the alphabetical segments just makes using it that much easier. I'd read this out of sheer fascination the whole way through, but it really is a useful reference point - coming from a beginner-intermediate Japanese user who is still learning - for any questions that have been like an itch in the back of your mind. I look forward to getting the other two in the set soon.

This is very much a reference book and not a textbook, but it's invaluable for those who want a deeper understanding of Japanese grammar. It says "basic grammar" but it is far more in-depth than my textbook which claimed to be "complete". The main part of the book is the dictionary itself: ordered in (romaji) alphabetical order. Each entry has a definition, translation(s), model and example sentences, explanatory notes and references to similar entries. It also has some helpful "Characteristics of Japanese Grammar" at the beginning and Appendices and Indices at the end. This book is not for everyone; for one thing it's written in academic language which can be off-putting to those who are unfamiliar with it. If you're just starting out learning Japanese, you probably don't need this book just yet. But if you find your textbook doesn't go into enough detail for you, if you're genuinely interested in all the details or you just want to become really good at grammar, this is a great book.

Undeniably a valuable resource, but it's not enough. I couldn't find some things I was looking for, hopefully they'll be in the intermediate book.

Very easy to use.

I purchased the dictionary upon the recommendation of my sensei. We had used it several times during our one-to-one tuitions, when we needed to figure out the proper use of certain verbs, prepositions, etc. So far I have only used it once or twice myself but the dictionary seems like a valuable resource for those situations where one simply does not know what the correct grammatical use of Nihongo is. I am looking forward to bringing it to my future lessons and then using it more frequently.

Amazing book with a lot of information.

Amazing book that will teach you A LOT about Japanese grammar points as well as some important notes on casual and formal speech, abbreviations and particles, and even more than that! Exceeded all of my expectations, a must have no matter how far you've come with your Japanese studies.