(Jump right to the book on Amazon here)
After having written over one thousand articles for this blog across more than a decade, sometimes I struggle to think about what to write about next. It’s happened more than once where I think about something to write about, but realize (sometimes mid-article) that I have already written about it years ago. That’s one of the reasons in the last few years there has been a lower percentage of grammar articles vs. other topics.
However, after being asked by some friends what sorts of study materials I recommend for Japanese, I found it hard to recommend my blog because after all it’s just a collection of unconnected articles.
I remembered that one of the assumptions in the back of mind when writing this blog was that there are already a lot of good books and websites that teach grammar fundamentals out there, so I was just trying to pick up little pieces here and there that may not have been covered other places. But I realized that there was really no reason for me to not try and make my own book about grammar essentials––leveraging all the knowledge I’ve gained studying and teaching grammar––hence “Japanese Grammar Gatten!” was born.
“Gatten” (合点）means “understanding” in Japanese, and the book is about increasing your understanding of Japanese grammar. Actually, since there is a huge amount of content I am planning on writing about, I decided to make this a series, not a single book. This article is about the release of the first book, Volume 1.
I have tried to take a slightly different focus than other grammar textbooks. Specifically, I focus on fundamentals that I think are the most important to Japanese, but also those that are significantly different from English. The book leverages many example sentences, building from single one-word sentences, to sentences with a handful of words by the end of the book.
I also have included multiple-choice quizzes at the end of each chapter, with over 60 total questions included. The book assumes no prior knowledge of Japanese, including alphabets (all sentences are given in both Japanese alphabets and English characters).
Just to make it clear, this book is NOT about collecting articles from my blog together. It’s entirely new content that I wrote from scratch (including the example sentences). And yeah, there is no AI involved in any of the production (:
Thanks to Priya Singh and Jim Miles for helping proofread
You can find it on Amazon here for only US $0.99 or equivalent, or also check it out below. I’ve included the entire table of contents at the bottom of this article if you want to learn more.
I’m planning on starting Volume 2 soon, and would appreciate any feedback about the book (please email comments to selftaughtjapanese (at) gmail.com).
Full table of contents:
- Introduction
- A Word about Alphabets
- Chapter 1: Verbs, the casual non-past tense, and minimalism
- Chapter 2: Nouns, objects, and the object particle
- Chapter 3: Subjects, the “ga” particle, and a question word
- Chapter 4: Na-adjectives and the copula
- Chapter 5: The topic and emphasis particles
- Chapter 6: Verbs of existence
- Chapter 7: The past tense
- Chapter 8: Using the “ni” particle for the location of existence
- Chapter 9: I-adjectives
- Chapter 10: Using the “no” particle to connect nouns
- Chapter 11: Understanding the verb “wakaru” and adverbs
- Chapter 12: Polite language and the “ka” particle
- Appendix 1: Hiragana alphabet
- Appendix 2: Katakana alphabet
- Appendix 3: Kanji alphabet
- Acknowledgments