Japanese Phrases

So once again I bought a useful supply for my japanese language studies. The Ultimate Japanese Phrasebook which I bought from amazon. As the cover says it contains 1800 sentence for each kind of everday situation and a free CD with mp3 files to listen to the phrases. What kind of phrases the buyer gets I will tell later on.

Two ladies wrote this book and they claim that this book aims to give the reader the most natural, colloquiel form of japanese. Phrases which you use with friends are written in not so formal japanese and phrases you use while asking strangers or the police or post officers are written in polite form. And I like to quote one of the authors:

Japanese is not a terribly difficult language to speak. Next to German, French or Chinese, spoken Japanese is a walk in the park in tems of pronounciation and structure, and the verb forms used in daily conversation have a mere handful of variations to grasp.

The book starts off like all books for people who learn japanese or like any japanese language guide book for travelers. Starting with basics like greeting people.

Next to that we of course got the phrases to say goodbye to each other.
A few may know Khatzumotos Blog All Japanese all the time. He said that it is important to learn with sentences. That way you learn the structure of japanese language and can easyly swap words to form another information with the same setup. Having a phrasebook makes it easy  to get sentences one wants to learn.

Getting those phrases can be the hardest part since when you start you don’t know japanese. You don’t know which phrase is useful or not. Of course it is the best to learn everyday use phrases and that is what this book promises.
All in all the book has 19 chapters dedicated to different parts of everyday life. Talking about family, time, shopping, asking for directions, eating outside, hanging around with friends.

And if there are some interesting things the book even explains grammar for easier understanding.

You just want to tell your friend what a lucky bastard he is and you are jealous of him? Even for that reason you will find a phrase in this book!

Of course everyday use means also insults. I guess there are a ton more insults in japanese but the book still offers more than I ever read about insults in japanese. One thing I really thought was funny is, that they even translated WTF for us in the Indignation part of the Feelings chapter. From now on I will use ゲッ、何それ！or in romaji “ge, nani sore!” or sort GNS!

The book even tells us how to say one needs to buy toilet paper after one found out that all is gone after taking a poo!

You want to get laid with a japanese girl or boy? Don’t worry even for that purpose this book can help you!
It even gives the correct japanese for male and female users. In a lot of Textbooks you don’t get the differences in male and female japanese.

But now I do understand why there was a parental advisory at the beginning of the book.

The funny thing is, after insulting the japanese and spending money at love hotels the last pages are the ones I showed in the picture above. “I want to speak better japanese” Wise decision after all what happened.

All in all this book is worth every $$ and the mp3s with english and japanese voice actors are a really nice adition.

If you still haven’t started learning or already did. If you are a beginner or veteran. I think this book is a good investement because of those 1800 phrases with a lot you never heard off.