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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Indispensible grammar reference, 9 Jun 2003
I love this book! The main section is an alphabetical listing of various grammatical features such as particles, auxillary verbs and adjectives, useful constructions, key words and phrases, and so on. Each entry comes with detailed notes and examples on how to use the grammar point, how not to use it, how it compares with other features with similar meanings, etc. All the example sentences are written in both Japanese and romaji. And don't be misled by the word 'Basic' in the title. There is a plenty in this book to make it interesting to an intermediate student. But when you find you need something more, there is an 'Intermediate' companion volume by the same authors. Aside from main dictionary section the book contains a useful explanation of many grammatical terms that may not be familiar to some students, and a long section on the general features of Japanese grammar, such as word order. There are also a number of quite useful appendices - perhaps the most useful shows the rules behind the sound mutations of numerals + counters, which are pretty daunting for the beginner. An English index allows you to find the Japanese equivalent of an English construction. I thoroughly recommend this book to all serious students of Japanese.
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