A Guide to Japanese Grammar: A Japanese approach to learning Japanese grammar

New thought:After I have completed this book, I can tell the most important reason why I recommend it.The book shines new lights. For example, usually Te-form is treated as a "separated" conjugation, but the author of this book divides Te-form into smaller elements: the stems of verbs, and the suffixes. Therefore, almost all conjugations could be derived from the more basic units. Once you master what the stems of verbs are, you could easily conjugate verbs to Te-form, Ta-form and so forth. For me, it is much more methodic than treating each conjugation form as a separated one. It is helpful to construct the impression that all conjugations actually have connections, therefor avoid confusions.Previous thoughts:I have GENKI books and another Japanese grammar book, but I still bought this one.As described, the book is a printout for who prefer having a physical one (or dead trees) in hands. It was printed once I placed order, considering the cost of printing and binding and shipping, I think it is dirty cheap and totally disagree someone giving 3 stars because it is “just press” of free content from the author's website, especially the description has already clearly indicated that.I like the book because it doesn’t have ignoring Roma phonetic notions for whole sentences. I have browsed several Japanese grammar books, and really don’t like their clumsy phonetic notions. If someone even doesn’t want to grasp Hiragana, why bothers to learn grammar?By the way, in addition to assumption that potential readers have already mastered Hiragana, the author would expect they have know the most common Kanji, at least, learning. Otherwise, you may find it is a kind of challenge to begin with the "Basic Grammar".The book is organized in a clear structure of "grounding up", I agree it may make more sense than learning simple expressions first. I'm trying to master a language, not just go to Japan and order some dishes in a Japanese restaurant. Well, the GENKI books begin with a scenario of two students meeting each other, and most books teach this way, but I want to change the point of view, as the author stated, to the point of view of Japanese, because many Japanese expressions don't have direct counterparts in English. I also think that introducing masu-form expressions first is wired in other books, I do want to learn dictionary form of verbs first, then advance to conjugations.Since I have learned some, I mainly take this book as a quick reference easy to shuffle and write down notes, yeah, there are a lot of blank spaces in pages because of layout design. Oh, one more thing, the font size of the book I have suddenly becomes smaller from page 37 (section 3.4 Adjectives). Although I don't care about this issue, I hope the author could modify. And, I prefer to have a wider line space.Anyway, I really appreciate Tae Kim composed such a useful book.

I scrolled through the book and there seems to be a weird smear campaign against this book, according to the images. This book goes over a lot of overlooked aspects of Japanese grammar, and I recommend it personally.

I purchased the blue book version, printed in 2014, and it is smaller than the orange one (2012). It is easy to carry around in my purse around Tokyo. I've been studying using this textbook in Tokyo parks, restaurants, coffee shops, on the densha (JR train), while walking....It has a wax-like coated cover (which is great given that Japan rains a lot) and gives it a nice, soft feel on the hands. I just wish there was a kindle formatted version too. Please, Mr. Kim, onegaishimasu.Personally, my core set for learning Japanese, the cream-of-the-crop best items, is as follows:1. Genki I and II, including the workbooks, 2nd edition - the textbook for UCLA Japanese classes. Absolute gem of a book. This is your go-to "traditional" textbook.2. Heisig's Remembering the Kanji - Remember 2000 kanji in 2 months? Yes. It's amazing.3. Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar (my cliff notes) - Great refresher for stuff you learned. This book is like the golden notebook that you stole from that A+ student in your college Japanese class.4. "Japanese" app by Renzo Inc. from the Apple Store. Includes wwwjdic dictionary, all conjugations for every word (volitional, transitive, past, present, polite form, etc.) , a built in flashcard builder, kanji stroke order videos for all kanji, and more from this sweet app. Absolute must purchase. This is like a super-dictionary. Don't have an iPhone? Buy an iPod Touch 5th gen. and get this app. It is worth buying an iPod Touch just for this app.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Optional study supplementals which are great for learning Japanese:s1. White Rabbit Press - Kanji Flashcards 1, 2, 3 - best Japanese flashcards around with all the Joyou Kanji.s2. NihonShock's Cheat Sheet Pack - 10 laminated colorful notes of all the vital Japanese grammars3. Anki - a flashcard program that lets you download shared cards created by other users & allows you to make your own flashcards on the computer.

This book is much better for self-learning than other textbooks. The problem with Genki and others is that they're written for a classroom setting (hence all the group/partner exercises) or with a dedicated tutor. Therefore, grammar nuances aren't readily available but in "A Guide to Japanese Grammar", Tae Kim anticipates and explains common questions that arise for beginner learners in a reassuring, casual tone.The order of how grammar is introduced is different than other textbooks/classes which I think is better for beginner learners. Tae Kim starts off with explaining the very basic building blocks of grammar ("plain" and "informal" forms) and then gradually introduces the complexities of "polite" and "formal" form. Other textbooks start you off with learning sentences in "polite form" and then breaks it down until you learn the "plain form." I found this harder to wrap my head around when I first studied Japanese and wished more books/classes had it like Tae Kim instead.The book is focused on grammar and does require understanding hiragana/katakana and some basic kanji. Personally, I'm okay with that because you get much more grammar material. The book itself is also much easier to reference back to, which was another issue I had with Genki. All in all, it's $20 for an amazing book so just buy it!!