Unlocking Japanese: Making Japanese as simple as it really is

I loved this book.I am really struggling with Japanese, more than any other language I've attempted. Some of it is just that there is a lot more to learn with Japanese than there is with European languages. With most of my other languages, they use the same latin script and have very similar word order. Japanese has its own set of scripts, the kana and the kanji. It has a word order that is different from English.But there was something more going on. I'd completed nearly the entire Genki volume one and was still struggling, waiting for things to click and start making sense. I was beginning to suspect something, and this book, Unlocking Japanese, confirmed it.Japanese and English have very different grammar rules and structures. So much so that using western grammar concepts and terms to explain Japanese grammar is a bit like jamming a square peg through a round hole. It just doesn't work.And yet that is how most of the mainstream teach yourself Japanese books work, they use concepts familiar to English speakers to teach Japanese.One great example from the book is the topic particle wa (は). Grammatical particles already can be difficult for English speakers because we don't have anything like them in our language. But the topic particle (は）and the subject particle ga (が）are particularly confusing for English learners.In English every sentence must have, at the very least, a subject and verb. If it doesn't, it's not a complete sentence.Other languages are more flexible, allowing us to drop the subject when it is easily understood in context. Japanese is one of those languages.What does that have to do with our particles and how using English grammar is confusing? The answer is that too many English learners (and even veteran Japanese teachers) make the mistake of equating the topic of the sentence (marked by は) with the subject of the sentence. This is made worse by the fact that the actual subject of the sentence is frequently omitted.The book gives the example of a Japanese person entering a restaurant and saying 私はウナギです。"Watashi wa unagi desu." Literally, I (は）eel, is. Many non native speakers would mistakenly translate this as "I am an eel."The server, on the other hand, nods and goes tell the chef to prepare eel, understanding the true message, "As for me, it will be the eel."And that is only one chapter out of the book. The book tackles many other thorny issues in Japanese grammar. It has helped me understand Japanese much better. But more importantly it has shown me the limitations of many of the other books and courses I have seen. I am now focussing more on reading, listening and learning how to speak Japanese. I intend to approach Japanese grammar the way natives do, in Japanese once my level is good enough.I agree with the basic premise of the book, that Japanese makes more sense when you don't try to explain it in terms of English grammar.I recommend the book highly to anyone who is struggling with Japanese, and any one who is considering learning Japanese and doesn't want to struggle quite so much.

This book was a fantastic read that really shores up misconceptions about integral Japanese grammar. I would not recommend this for someone brand new to learning Japanese but rather an upper beginner. The goal of the book is NOT to teach you new concepts but instead to rectify areas Japanese learners commonly struggle with.

This was actually rather insightful and goes a long way towards eliminating so many of the grammatical “exceptions” I’ve got to juggle in my mind as I’m learning and using Japanese

Cure Dolly has some strange YouTube videos as far as style is concerned but here the core explanations of the pure logical consistency of Japanese is laid out plainly. DO NOT SKIP THIS BOOK. So much becomes clear after her explanation of how we suffer seeing Japanese through the lenses of English grammar. I guarantee you will be glad you read it.

Cure Dolly is perhaps the smartest entity I've ever encountered. I feel bad for all the people who have had to learn Japanese without her. Whether you're learning from websites aimed at anime/manga lovers, traditional textbooks, youtube personalities, etc... they all fundamentally teach the same version of Westernized Japanese grammar. I've been through a lot of sources, and it's hard to overstate how unique Cure Dolly's approach is. You may wonder to yourself "if everybody else teaches it one way and Cure Dolly another, surely she must be wrong," but I promise you this isn't the case. She teaches Japanese the way it's taught to native Japanese, all without bogging you down with grammatical terminology. It truly is the "organic method." You'll find yourself getting angry at your old textbooks for how they force Japanese into Western grammar constructs for the sake of being easily accessible at the cost of actually making sense by the time you're done. And if you think YOUR textbook is any different, it's not. But don't worry, this book will fix all that.

The author makes a strong case: using Western/European grammar concepts to explain Japanese is not only inadequate, it gives learners a LOT of misconceptions.In here, they'll give you the pieces of the puzzle that you never knew you needed. They clarify a lot of points and show Japanese for what it is: a logical, consistent language with a different world view from English.Usually, I can't finish nonfiction because they're too long. Even textbooks are too boring and dense that I skim over everything.However, I read this cover to cover. It feels more like 10 or more interconnected articles (or longform blog posts). I personally like it.It's bite-sized enough to be manageable (I never thought I'd say that about a grammar book). At the same time, it's coherent enough to make present a solid message.________________________PS. If you're looking for a complete grammar book, this isn't it. It corrects what conventional grammar teaches wrong. So you may need to supplement with a conventional grammar book.ON THE OTHER HAND, as the author recommends: if you can use Japanese, then by all means use the Japanese terms that Japan teaches to its Japanese natives. Even if it's the grammar stuff taught to Japanese children.This book gives you the gist and the adequate amount of info you need. It works well for busy people or those uninterested in the technical depths of linguistics. From what I understand, the author mentioned Dr. Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese for even more info.

Escelente para entender de una vez la diferencia y la forma de pensar entre ha y ga así como algunos temas indispensables en japones.

This book offers helpful tips in understanding certain aspects of Japanese. It also clarifies some of the confusion brought about by learning Japanese using a Eurocentric grammatical lens. Taken together, it reads like a series of articles on specific aspects of Japanese, helping learners to re-frame seemingly difficult concepts in to simple, predictable rules. Definitely a helpful read to a high beginner learner who has already learned the concepts in some way and has experienced the confusion.However, I don't feel this on its own can be used as a basis for Japanese learning without having read some of the textbooks she criticizes. I believe a new learner would have a difficult time understanding what she's referencing, had they not read one of the main textbooks first (i.e. Genki, Tae Kim). This is somewhat disappointing, as the perspective is promising and I certainly would have preferred to have started with a textbook that takes these criticisms into account and teaches Japanese using a Japanese framework.All-in-all, an easy read that I feel is worth your time for what it does - clarifies certain oddities that produce unnecessary frustration to Japanese learners.

Útil pra quem já está por volta do nível intermediário. É mais ou menos por aí que passamos a confabular sobre diferenças entre partículas e outros pontos gramaticais importantes e o livro trás várias explicações interessantes fazendo isso por meio do pensamento japonês e não do pensamento gramatical do inglês. Tirei uma estrela pq acho que poderia ter mais frases de exemplo.

This book made the distinction between は and が much clearer, helped me make sense out of "passive" verbs and in general made my way of thinking hopefully a little bit closer to a native.

To say 'I never knew THAT' for just about everything in this book would be an understatement.'Unlocking Japanese' was truly enlightening to read, and extremely reassuring for me to learn that Japanese is in fact a much more sensible and elegantly ordered language than first impressions and other textbooks would describe.If anything, this book's content highlights the many inconsistencies of the English language in comparison, and explains key prerequisite concepts in Japanese grammar. Many other English language texts on learning Japanese mistakenly try to explain Japanese in terms of modern English grammar equivalence, with the result that students are incorrectly taught to learn by rote what appear to be innumerable inconsistent grammatical usage variants, when in fact the underlying Japanese grammar rules (explained in this book) are straightforward and entirely consistent.This book's content is set out extremely clearly, and is a perfect match for the KawaJapa site. In fact for those who prefer written learning materials, this book & the website text may be preferable to the new series of Cure Dolly's instructional videos on grammatical elements in common with this book, although the videos are entertaining in their own right with useful visual examples and audio pronunciation.Thank you, Cure Dolly -For me, you have made learning Japanese an achievable goal, as opposed to simply studying it.