A Reference Grammar of Japanese [ハードカバー]

I agree with most of what's been said, so I'll just outline it from a perspective of someone who learnt Japanese in a communicative environment, and who is now looking at it from a linguistic perspective.

1. As per the title, the book is a reference grammar. This means that it is *not* intended for people wanting to simply learn from it. It means that it is *not* intended for beginners students. Rather, it means that the book is intended for two types of people; a) advanced/intermediate students/speakers of the language who are interested in having a *reference* to the lexico-grammatical forms of the language. b) Linguists who are interested in understanding some forms of the language for whatever reason.

To say that the book is 'learner unfriendly' goes against the whole point of the book; you simply cannot rate this book 1/5 because of this! The book is intended as a reference grammar!

2. The book is very extensive. I haven't come across any forms in the language that are not in this book. It also covers a lot of archaic and non-productive forms, which is helpful for people translating older or more formal texts. Despite what the author says in his defence, it is quite exhaustive. Yes this is daunting for some, but then you should obviously consult a different work.

3. The use of transliteration. The book doesn't use native Japanese characters because it is aimed not only as a reference for advanced students of the language, but for linguists who may not have time to learn any characters, or who may simply need to look up one form.

4. The book is accessible to linguists, and despite what has been said, is approachable from 'the middle'. You do not have to start at page 1 in order to use it.

I only have two criticisms:

a) Format. Sometimes, the lack of headings/bolding/boxes/etc makes it difficult to quickly locate specific forms or to find paradigm examples. This means that you have to sometimes read a few pages to find one construction.

b) Terms. The terms used by the author are sometimes a little idiosyncratic to the older schools of Japanese grammatical theory. Even though there is a 2004 edition, it seems that a few terms could be updated to more modern universally-accepted grammatical terms.

Other than that, I can definitely recommend the book!

If possible, I would give it four and a half stars.

I understand the other reviewers' concerns, it is probably not intended to teach usage, nor as a learner's book. For translations, it is indispensable. Pretty much everything questionable that I have run into when doing translations from late-19th century Japanese on has been explained in Martin. Yes, the index is huge and spotty at times, but it is well worth the pain if you want to do accurate translations, especially of historical materials.

As for the romaji, I've had it explained to me by people who like the Yale system that the system allows one to break up and analyze grammatical patterns in a way in which kana do not- for instance, when examining different inflections of "verbs." It's artificial, but at times more incisive a tool than using native Japanese orthography (which was developed after the spoken language anyway...). I learned using Jorden anyway, which renders my mind twisted according to some...

This is one of the most comprehensive grammars available on Japanese. Although old layout and typesetting has a detrimental effect on the readability, this is a must-have for any student of the Japanese language with aspirations towards linguistics.

"any_book" said that the condition of the item is "new," but it was underlined on several places, and the corner of the front hard-cover was bent. Also, the sheet-cover on the book was wounded. The company should have estimated it correctly.

I imagine this book would be a useful reference for advanced students of Japanese, professional translators, and those deeply interested in linguistics. However, the book's academic style and intricately detailed discussions are not useful to me, an intermediate student of Japanese with only a passing interest in linguistics,