http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?nod … 20Japanese

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1328584

A couple or pertinent links.  Or not.

Khatsumoto recently said that short sentences were better for SRSing. In light of that, I think this book looks extremely good because of your objection about shorts sentences. 

AFAIK Short entries are considered to be useful by some because they're phrasal, and language is built out of individual phrases possibly more than it's built out of individual words, so it is considered beneficial to have a repertoire. Conciseness doesn't factor.

Also, short sentences are less boring than longer ones. So using them is better than giving up due to a burnout.

Again, seeing that the first poster mentioned that it helped add content to the various shows then I see the point.  These are not phrases that'll pop up in beginner studies, nor formal books. I'm guessing this'll be the stuff that you get when you mine shows for sentences.

What I meant by short, I mean 1 word short with no context unless you wrote that in english. Still, that was my impression when starting out with sentence mining. Hell, I've been dismissing Rosetta but am impressed with their effort on Version 3. It's good to revisit things as time goes on to see if there really is a bit of treasure there.

Yeah, the second book got the worst heat. The first one seems to be generally liked, actually. It's $8... what the hell. I'll get it.

Out of curiosity I read the amazon.com reviews before replying. Yikes, the one Japanese girl certainly hated the second book - or maybe she just had a bad reaction to the guys who were using it to pick her up. I have this image of some guys cornering her in a bar and reading out the worst phrases. Anyways, let's all be careful of individual reactions - we've probably all heard enough negative reviews of Heisig. Plus, both books had positive reviews - to each their own.

Are some of phrases out of date? So I've heard. Maybe I'll later discover some are past prime. OK, no biggie. Every book has some phrases I'd never use. Has it been useful for me? Absolutely. I'm currently watching ヒカルの碁　and recently watched 電車男 and At Home Dad. I was surprised how often I heard sentences word for word from the book. Other times they were close enough to figure out. It was a great help, and I doubt anyone would consider the language in those dramas out of date.

I've flipped through the second one, and though there is a little overlap, it's effectively a distinct book. Haven't mined the sentences in it however, so I won't give an opinion.

Though the title, Making Out in Japanese, suggests the book is all about sex and pickups, only a part of it is. In fact, the most useful parts were those that had nothing to do with sex. Anyways, a phrase book is not something you take into a bedroom. In Japanese, just like in English, most of that goes unsaid, and when something needs to be spoken, one word will often suffice. But I digress ...

Yes, the book is filled with small sentences. That's one of the reasons I dismissed it at first. But as anyone who has progressed in Japanese conversation knows, the language is filled with short, precise sentences (though, of course, some people love to ramble on) and so a good grounding in those kinds of sentences is invaluable, IMHO. In movies and dramas I hear lots of sentences like 冗談じゃねえよ　and 　そうじゃなくて　and I have yet to hear　これは鉛筆です. This book only focuses on sentences like the first two, and leaves the third to textbooks.

In addition, as the phrases are so short, I think they're better suited to the vocabulary section of Trinity. I've not tried it yet though.

Zarxrax wrote:

Oh, by the way, anyone wanna do the "input part of the book into a spreadsheet and then share it" thing with this?

Please count me in as well.

My book should be coming in tomorrow, so if it does, I'll take a look at it and maybe try to set up the project.

Well, I misunderstood what it said on Amazon, so my book was actually *shipping* today, so it will be a while longer before I get it. I just made a thread on the AJATT sentences google group for this book anyways.

Edit: since many people can't access the group, we will do it here instead

Those of you who want to join the project, just go and post saying which chapter you want to take (1-14). Since a lot of us still don't have the book, there's not exactly a rush to get started, so the specifics of it can still be talked over.

Last edited by Zarxrax (2008 August 12, 11:25 am)

Whatever, count me in.

Edit: I really can't do anything if they don't let me in the group. So...

Last edited by alyks (2008 August 11, 10:58 pm)