Eriko Sato - Japanese For Dummies

Japanese For Dummies, 2ND EDITION

by Eriko Sato, PhD

Japanese For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774

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Copyright 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012947693

ISBN 978-1-118-13071-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-05385-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-05618-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-21861-7 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Eriko Sato, PhD, is Director of the Teacher Certification Program for Japanese and the Pre-College Japanese Language Program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she has been teaching Japanese language, linguistics, and pedagogy since 1995. She authored the previous edition of Japanese For Dummies (Wiley), as well as Contemporary Japanese: A Textbook for College Students (Tuttle) and Japanese Demystified (McGraw Hill). She also coauthored My First Japanese Kanji Book (Tuttle), Essential Japanese Grammar (Tuttle), and Basic Japanese (Tuttle).

Authors Acknowledgments

I want to thank all the wonderful editors at Wiley. My heartfelt thanks go to the project editor, Jennifer Tebbe, and the copy editor, Megan Knoll, for their amazing editing skills, professionalism, and kindness. I enjoyed working with them throughout the project. Additionally, I am indebted to the two technical reviewers, Hiroko Chiba and Allen Kidd, who offered numerous valuable suggestions from a variety of viewpoints. Special thanks to Constance Carlisle for creating the audio recordings for this book, and to Wileys executive editor, Lindsay Lefevere, and my agent, Grace Freedson, for helping me get engaged in the Japanese For Dummies projects. I also want to thank my students at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and in its Pre-College Japanese Language Program for giving me the most valuable input, inspiration, and insight. Finally, I wish to thank my husband, Yimei, our daughter, Anna, and my family in Japan for their support and love.

Publishers Acknowledgments

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Introduction

W e live in a wonderfully global and amazingly diverse society. Exchanging ideas, products, foods, and friendship across national and cultural boundaries is the key to making our lives richer and more meaningful and peaceful. Besides, traveling abroad is a lot cheaper than it used to be. Grabbing your passport and setting off on an adventure is always fun, but its even more fun when you can communicate with people in a different country in their own language.

If Japanese is the language you want to learn, for whatever reason, Japanese For Dummies, 2nd Edition, can help. It provides instant results, plus some of the cultural background behind the language. Now, Im not saying that youll be fluent overnight, but you will gain confidence, have fun, and continue to pick up more and more Japanese so that you can carry on a conversation with your Japanese-speaking co-worker, family member, friend, or neighbor.

About This Book

Japanese For Dummies, 2nd Edition, can help you whether you want to get familiar with Japanese because youre planning a trip to my island-nation homeland, because you deal with Japanese companies at work, or because your new neighbor is Japanese and you want to be able to say good morning to him or her. (Try ohay gozaimasu [oh-hah-yohh goh-zah-ee-mah-soo].) I give you the most-important and most-used Japanese words and phrases on subjects as diverse as shopping, money, food, and sports in self-contained chapters and sections.