yudantaiteki Wrote:They're not "vastly" different; modern written Japanese is fairly close to modern spoken Japanese; of course there's a more formal register but it's not that much different from the typical spoken language.

In my experiences, they are vastly different. Whenever I come across the original Japanese article or stuff like family letters (which the owner permits me to read them), it strikes me that they are somewhat written in a formal manner, whilst conveying the same thing/topic over a conversation - it took on a different tone or expression from what was written.

I begin to understand some aspect of it after reading 日本語の生態 written by Osamu Mizutani ("Japanese: The Spoken Language in Japanese Life" translated by Janet Ashby), or the help of some natives who are able to explain these "gaps of differences".

yudantaiteki Wrote:Subway station names are not simple. Place names are one of the absolute hardest things to read in Japanese; you can never be sure you have the correct reading unless you already know what the name is supposed to be.

Perhaps, I should point out that the subway station names are 東京, 銀座 and 上野 which my "half-Japanese" friend cannot recognize or read. I was sort of taken aback at that time as it was the umpteen trips to Tokyo riding the subway... it turned out that my friend had been using the numbering system or color code in the railway system. Anyway, I jokingly said that "No big deal, even one of the former Japanese PM couldn't read some of the Kanji and was "made fun" of by the news media."

Sorry turvy, didn't mean to hijack your thread! Let's get back to the OP query

@eslang I am going to get that book and read it in Japanese, let's see what happens.

Any books like DoBJG for Chinese?

Any recommended books on Chinese grammar?

turvy Wrote:@eslang I am going to get that book and read it in Japanese, let's see what happens.

I bought that book quite some years back... I find it really helpful.

I'm not sure which is a good recommendation for Chinese grammar books...
what do you think of these on Amazon?

Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook (Grammar Workbooks)

Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary

From Wikipedia external links under "Chinese grammar" -
Unilang Chinese Grammar wikipage

An Introduction to Chinese Grammar

Elementary Chinese revision notes and exercises

A Japanese friend who is learning Chinese suggested this site:
中国語文法の学習開始

Thanks for the links, I think there are a few I hadn't seen before. I ended up ordering Chinese Demystified. Let's see how it goes.

Today I had Anna méi bànfa! delivered as well and started going through it. I read a page and didn't understand anything, nice. I am using Pleco for iOS, which is free (though you download extra paid content like audio and additional dictionaries).

The cool thing was that when I finished with it, going back to reading Japanese felt so at home.

turvy Wrote:Any books like DoBJG for Chinese?

Any recommended books on Chinese grammar?

My Chinese teacher is a grammar book nut, and told me that he had been unable to find any English-language based grammar books for Chinese that were worth the paper they were printed on... until I found this book shortly after its publication and pointed him towards it.

YUFA! By Wen-Hua Teng
http://www.amazon.com/YUFA-Practical-Man...1444109138

Now he wholeheartedly recommends it as the best Chinese grammar book by far that he has ever seen. I also think it is a fantastic tool in my Chinese studies.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

turvy Wrote:For those of you learning Chinese, how much of an aid is the fact that Chinese has apparently such an easy grammar, at least compared to Japanese. Does that mean it's easier to get to a point where you can communicate and understand what people say?.

Yes. I was able to get to a basic communication level in Chinese much faster than in Japanese. The initial problem is the pronunciation, which can be a very big hurdle.

But some of it is based on what you practice -- you get better at what you practice, with only some spillover to other areas. So if you mostly do reading, you're going to get better at reading, not oral communication.

How much faster was it? and how hard was to get confortable with the tones?. Would you mind sharing a little bit of your experience?.

turvy Wrote:How many readings do Chinese characters have in Chinese (Mandarin)?. Is it like in Japanese where each character usually have more than 1 reading?

According to one of my older posts, “it's estimated that, among the 3000 most used characters in Chinese, around 700+ of them are polyphonic, mostly comprised of tone variations; therefore, the remaining ~2300 have only one accepted pronunciation. (And, out of a list of 12,000 characters, ~2700 of them are polyphonic.)”

By polyphonic, I mean that they 'have more than one reading' (polyphonic was the term used in the source I got that information from, which I forgot to keep.) There's also this forgotten spreadsheet which shows the pronunciations for the characters in its 3 different tables (you can change between them at the bottom.)