Martin's book is romanized, not user friendly, dense but extremely comprehensive. The dictionaries are great for usability but lack the almost absurd coverage of Martin. I'd probably go as far to say they are better, yes. I also recommend the 8547 Japanese sentences Anki deck though I've never actually read the book they come from.

I also suggest reading as many grammar explanations as possible.

Last edited by HonyakuJoshua (2012 October 31, 12:41 am)

yeah i checked your right - i thought the deck came from 日本語文型辞典 which i have not read and which is in Makino and TsuTsui's bibliography.

Last edited by HonyakuJoshua (2012 October 31, 1:00 am)

日本語文型辞典 is a very good resource.

Martin's book is linguistically oriented and not intended for language learners -- this doesn't mean it will be completely useless but the DOxJ and 文型辞典 are probably better.

Perhaps you'd be interested in this: http://cheatsheets.nihonshock.com/

It's a set of 9 cheat sheets (the basic one is free to download). Together they contain in some form almost every grammar point from both the beginner and advanced editions of 日本語文法ハンドブック (a Japanese teacher's guide) and also The Japan Times's 3-volume "Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar". I know this because I made the cheat sheets ;-)

(Sorry if this comes off as self-promotion but if you click the link I'm pretty sure you'll agree it's more than relevant.)

lloydvincent wrote:

Perhaps you'd be interested in this: http://cheatsheets.nihonshock.com/

It's a set of 9 cheat sheets (the basic one is free to download). Together they contain in some form almost every grammar point from both the beginner and advanced editions of 日本語文法ハンドブック (a Japanese teacher's guide) and also The Japan Times's 3-volume "Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar". I know this because I made the cheat sheets ;-)

(Sorry if this comes off as self-promotion but if you click the link I'm pretty sure you'll agree it's more than relevant.)

On the basic Japanese sheet http://minus.com/mbprMlD1bZ2j08 i don't really think that たら is after....
Also Ta is not strictly the past tense as a  good grammar book will tell you

I thought bakari was a bit too simplistic.

You didnt add that to be able to love is aiseru in the suru to dekiru part

te shimau can can also mean to complete

It is well presented though....

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

On the basic Japanese sheet http://minus.com/mbprMlD1bZ2j08 i don't really think that たら is after....
Also Ta is not strictly the past tense as a  good grammar book will tell you

I thought bakari was a bit too simplistic.

You didnt add that to be able to love is aiseru in the suru to dekiru part

te shimau can can also mean to complete

It is well presented though....

Thanks for checking it out. Note that that's the Basic Japanese sheet, I think "TA = past tense" is perfectly fine for anyone who isn't a Japanese teacher.

The irregular conjugations of ai suru are covered on Natural Japanese, again something that's not really a beginner topic.

And TE-Shimau I have listed as "to do (irreversibly)", which in most cases implies the notion of completion, but better explains usages like もうすぐ映画が始まっちゃう and 電車が行ってしまった

It was originally two verbs that over time become one irregular verb, similar to how "wend" became the past tense of "go" in English.

Note that both 愛すれば and 愛せば are possible (though すれば is more common).

lloydvincent wrote:

It was originally two verbs that over time become one irregular verb, similar to how "wend" became the past tense of "go" in English.

Note that both 愛すれば and 愛せば are possible (though すれば is more common).

Not really.

Of course the original form was 愛す. 愛する is the traditional 連体形. I know exactly those two forms.

愛す　サ変　　　　
愛する　サ変　

However, 愛す　→　五段活用

This is why you can get 愛せば. This happens with other す　Verbs.

As you may know, the fusion of the 終止形　and 連体形 into one in favor of the latter for almost all inflectional items can be seen as early as the 鎌倉時代. At this time it was more so an emphatic poetic development, but it quickly became far more widespread.

愛する　Is now the 終止形 and 連体形. However, the original is still used in a limited fashion with other verbs, and of course the voiced forms resulted in new verbal endings like ～じる　in　感じる which now conjugate as a　一段　but also in the form 感ずる, the logical next step after 感ず, has some remaining bases that reflect its original conjugation. 感ずれば, which is so literary now, but clearly it still is possible.

Your work is awesome by the way, and you've done a lot of work making it. It's clear that you know your stuff; I think we are just disagreeing on very little details. I might just be the one being too strict with terminology. You should take a look at mine.

Last edited by imabi (2012 October 31, 4:25 pm)

Same with yours, I'm going through it now too. Ya, I study a lot of Japanese linguistics. I always like understanding why something is.
I particularly like dialectology and Classical Japanese.

Yes, the differences between the two conjugation systems if you will are purely stylistic and limited to their respective situations, of which obviously the use of suru and its normal bases is dominant today, that is unless you get into dialects, which I do.

The traditional bases of す

未然形：せ・さ
連用形：し
終止形：す
連体形：する
已然形：すれ
命令形：せよ

Of course, we know that the first is used with endings like ん、ず、ぬ。
さ Is used with things like -れる。It is limited.

In Modern Japanese it gets more tricky

未然形：し、さ、せ
連用形：し
終止形：する
連体形：する
已然形：すれ
命令形：しろ・せよ・せい

The emergence of three 未然形 is rather reminiscent of the multiple sets of bases seen for other things historically in Japanese. This gets muddled with other dialects. From what it appears to be, it depends on the region which of the three are more prevalent in its conjugations.
The Western Dialects, for example, still tend to use the original se- base for negative endings.

Now, the problem comes with suru-verbs. I like to break them into different kinds as I've discovered restraints to patterns, using seru for the potential.

This is essentially like I said earlier treating something like 愛す as one morpheme. This in linguistic jargon means it's deemed as one unit, although we can clearly separate it as one part being Sino-Japanese and the other being native.
Thus, a "new" verb is created. Of course, it's always existed, but the change is in classification. This most certainly developed from overgeneralization of the rules, seeing that it ends in su, why not conjugate it like all the others?

This, though, has its restraints. You never see something like 勉強せる.

You also doesn't see 感ぜる。
You can, though, see 感ぜられる。Though, if this be used at all, it would most likely be the 受身形。

A lot to go through and consider. Overgeneralization has in many dialects greatly reduced the number of verbal classes.
Some dialects find a way to make basically everything an 一段 verb...if only

I'm only 18, but I am a Japanese study-holic. I would love to have discussions about Japanese with you. I actually really want to go to Nagoya. Alas, money....I'm stuck in the states.

I must warn you about some things concerning the site. Some lessons are incomplete or not finalized and may be very lacking or monstrously large. This is just because I'm undergoing a painstakingly long remodel project that will take perhaps half a year to finish, but some of the immediate issues are not going to be long lived, or at least that's the plan.

Last edited by imabi (2012 October 31, 5:32 pm)

Oh, at least you got to be there for a while. I'm going to turn 19 on the 16th...

If other responsibilities didn't get in the way, I'd study Japanese all day long.

Feel free to tell me of things you spot on the site that are unclear, incomplete in analysis, or inaccurate in anyway. Your input would be greatly valued. The site needs another very competent person around.

Last edited by imabi (2012 October 31, 6:01 pm)

Just study for hours and hours. I love just reading dictionary entries in Japanese. I just read a lot and over and over again. Reading so much makes me so tons of words over again. Part of it deals with having a somewhat photographic memory. It works best when I'm well rested and healthy, which at the moment I can't say I am. The only way things really slip my mind is from disuse.

Nothing is really that wrong with it. I get to speak often. Besides, my studying is varied. I also write frequently in Japanese and have it checked, which I find more productive because I retain more when I see things, which is why the work on my site is so important for me because I'm in constant contact with basically all of the notes I've made in my journey. Plus, since I have the responsibility to help so many people, I have an obligation to be the best I can in all of my Japanese faculties. If I had to rate my skills, I would say my reading is at adult level, my listening is at the lowest about 80%, but that's normally because of not catching what is being said rather than not understanding. My speaking is lacking a little to meet my expectations, but 習うより慣れろ。