Roy Andrew Miller, the guy who wrote the book A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons which I am working my way through. Here's some samples of Mr. Miller's reviews. I thought some of this was kind of amusing:

http://namakajiri.net/nikki/roy-andrew-m...c-dissing/

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Reader-Le...rew+miller

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Seriously vicious!

I really don't like that kind of sniping academic review -- I think people in the field should treat fellow scholars with more respect than that. It may look funny from the outside but I think it shows a lack of tact. He's not the only one who engages in this kind of writing, though.

Sounded to me like the works reviewed deserved all the ridicule Miller gave them.

Sigh. I've encountered enough of the self-important genius type (I've worked in tech for 20 years) to find this tedious. If he worked in my group, I'd actively champion his dismissal.

anotherjohn Wrote:Sounded to me like the works reviewed deserved all the ridicule Miller gave them.

I've read and used Vovin's work that he reviews and I have no idea what he's talking about -- I don't know if there was a second edition that fixed problems, but I don't remember any of the hiragana issues he's talking about. His complaints about the historical phonology of Vovin are presented as if Vovin has made factual errors, which in fact it's just that Miller doesn't agree with Vovin's views on the reconstruction of the historical phonology. Throughout the review he makes it seem like Vovin is an amateur hack who barely knows the Japanese writing system, but this is absurd -- Vovin's views on historical Japanese are in some cases unusual, but he is a scholar with decades of experience and deserves to be treated with some measure of respect. (By "respect" I don't mean that Miller needs to agree with Vovin or that the review must be favorable, but academic reviews suffer frequently from a level of nastiness that just doesn't need to be in there at all.)

I've seen several of these reviews elsewhere and I do broadly agree with yudantaiteki, but I did enjoy this line:

Quote:I suspect that O’Neill’s new system for arranging Chinese characters will be very popular among those people with whom new systems for arranging Chinese characters are popular

Sauzer Wrote:I've seen several of these reviews elsewhere and I do broadly agree with yudantaiteki, but I did enjoy this line:

Quote:I suspect that O’Neill’s new system for arranging Chinese characters will be very popular among those people with whom new systems for arranging Chinese characters are popular

I laughed at that one too!

But seriously, I like O'Neill. I'm using two of his books: "An Introduction to Written Japanese" and "Essential Kanji".

About Roy Miller: he doesn't come across as nearly so b i t c h y in his book "A Japanese Reader" which I am currently working through. However, there are some subtle signs, like where he says in the introduction (this made me smile by the way):

"The editor [Miller] has long felt that in teaching any language, and particularly one like written Japanese, there is no point in spoon-feeding the student on selections so simplified and "pasteurized" of all natural expression and idiom as to bear but little resemblance to the real thing. . . . [A]n attempt has been made here to limit the reading selections to "real" materials . . . rather than give space to "easy" artifical texts that might flatter the reader's ego but would actually give him little experience in dealing with current Japanese." Right on.