J is for Japanese

[muckefuck]

The pratical guide to Japanese signs : 1st pt., Especially for newcomers Moriyama, Tae ; translated by Jeffrey Cohen. Tokyo ; New York : Kodansha, 1997)

I know, total surprise, right? Sure, if there's anyone on your Friends list you'd expect to have a phrase book for Jakaltek or a Javanese grammar, it'd be me. I'd kill to have either and I'd dedicate a loving article to either if I did, but all I have instead is a half-dozen books on Japanese. Not because I'm particularly interested in the language, mind you, but because (a) such books are relatively easy to find and (b) I get asked a lot about it. Also, it's a "half-free" language: I already know most of the characters from studying Chinese and much of the grammar from learning Korean, so why not learn the vocab and pick it up?

In truth, I'm rather mortified that I've never even been motivated enough to memorise all the kana. Today at Toguri's in Lakeview, I saw a box of kana flash cards and mused that perhaps this is what it would take for me to learn them. Then I noticed the $29.95 price sticker and said, "Doubtless there are other items." (I left with an $11 book of short stories in translation.)

monshu and I have talked for years about visiting Japan. If we do, we may be thankful I picked up this little gem late last year. It teaches you how to read several dozen common signs from "first-class ticket counter" to "nigiri-zushi" by progressively building a repertoire of kanji. It even has little pictographic equivalents as aide-mémoires (e.g. a fruit on a table next to a sprouting plant for 社).

Unfortunately, according to our current timetable, such a vacation is at least two or three years off. What we could really use now would be a book that would do the same thing for Chinese. Sure, there is some overlap, but it's not easy to predict what it will be in advance. The Sinitic vocabulary of Japanese is somewhat "fossilised" vis-à-vis that of modern Standard Chinese. For instance, whereas the Japanese (and Koreans) still use 食堂 (lit. "eating hall") to mean "restaurant", to the Chinese this means a dining hall in an institution, i.e. a "canteen" and they prefer expressions like the florid 餐廳 (lit. "meal pavillion") or the more prosaic 飯店 ("cooked.rice shop").

So this well-organised, sensibly-written, pocket-sized book is more likely than most to gather dust on the shelf waiting for a day to be useful.