Hiroko M. Chiba - Japanese For Dummies

Japanese For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018963461

ISBN 978-1-119-47540-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-47542-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-47541-5 (ebk)

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 3
3. Chapter 4
4. Chapter 6
5. Chapter 7
6. Chapter 8
7. Chapter 9
8. Chapter 10
9. Chapter 11
10. Chapter 14
11. Chapter 15

We 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 of fun and an eye-opening experience. Grabbing your passport and setting off on an adventure is always exciting, but its even more special 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, 3rd Edition, can help. It provides substantial learning materials and 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.

Japanese For Dummies, 3rd Edition, can help you whether you want to get familiar with Japanese because youre planning a trip to this island nation, because you deal with Japanese companies at work, because you want to understand Anime/Manga in Japanese, 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].) This book provides you with helpful and commonly used Japanese words and phrases on subjects as diverse as shopping, money, food, and sports in self-contained chapters and sections.

Simply turn to the topics that interest you the most, play the online audio examples, and start speaking! Thats right, you dont have to go through this book in order. If I think you may want to know information thats contained in a different chapter than the one youre currently reading, I include a handy cross-reference so you can find the additional information when youre ready for it.

I also use a few conventions in this book to help your reading go smoothly:

• In many places throughout this book, Japanese terms appear in two forms: Japanese scripts (like what you would read if you were in Japan) and the Romanized forms of words (which appear in boldface so you can easily find them in the text). The official term for Romanized Japanese is rmaji (rohh-mah-jee).
• Pronunciations in parentheses and meanings or English equivalents in another pair of parentheses follow the Japanese terms. Note that meanings and English equivalents appear in italics.
• Verb conjugations (lists that show you the basic forms of a verb) are given in tables in this order: the dictionary form, the negative (nai-) form, the stem form (or the form before the polite suffix -masu), and the te-form. You find Japanese scripts in the first column, rmaji in the second column, and pronunciations in the third column. Heres a sample conjugation of the verb taberu (tah-beh-roo) (to eat):

  Japanese Script	Rmaji	Pronunciation
  taberu	tah-beh-roo
  tabenai	tah-beh-nah-ee
  ()	tabe (masu)	tah-beh (-mah-soo)
  tabete	tah-beh-teh

• Keep in mind that Japanese verbs dont conjugate like English verbs. You cant find exact counterparts for English verb forms such as infinitives, gerunds, and participles. In addition, you dont conjugate Japanese verbs in terms of the person and number, so