Common Japanese Collocations
Arts & Culture ( 7 )
TOKYO —
Collocations, or natural word combinations, exist in any language, but until now there have been few resources for learners of Japanese on this important yet difficult subject. “Common Japanese Collocations” is the first book to answer the question: Which word combinations are the most frequent in everyday Japanese speech? Through six chapters covering all aspects of daily life, this groundbreaking volume introduces more than 3,200 collocations — word pairings the Japanese use all the time — with which students can refine their speech and enrich their vocabulary.
If you are a beginning student of Japanese, chances are you often struggle to find the right combination of words to make yourself understood. If you are an intermediate student, perhaps you get by in day-to-day communication, but your spoken Japanese doesn’t sound as natural as you would like it to. Whatever the case, “Common Japanese Collocations” will serve you well.
Within the pages of this book are more than 3,200 collocations, or word combinations, used in everyday speech. By using these at appropriate moments, your spoken Japanese will sound more natural-and more sophisticated, meaning that you will make a better impression on those around you. Further, by studying the expressions in this book, you will enrich your vocabulary and gain a deeper understanding of Japanese thought and culture.
The book is divided into six chapters — Home, Daily Life, People, School & Work, Travel, and Entertainment — within which collocations are arranged by theme rather than alphabetically, making them easier to study. More than a third of the entries come with an example sentence to show how the combination in question is used in real life. For each kanji character or compound, hiragana has been provided, making the book readable to students at all levels.
In a word, “Common Japanese Collocations” is the ultimate resource for students wishing to refine their spoken Japanese.
The author, Kakuko Shoji, has been an instructor of Japanese at the University of Hawaii at Manoa since 1968. She is the author of “Basic Connections: Making Your Japanese Flow” and “Japanese Core Words and Phrases: Things You Can’t Find in a Dictionary,” and the chief contributor to “The Modern English-Nihongo Dictionary.”
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7 Comments
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nandakandamanda
An example of one would have been very helpful...
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my2sense
Kodansha Publishing has been dishing out a lot of these lately.... I should write a book... "How to fool and belittle the Japanese who think they are right"
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sctaber56
I fully agree with nandakandamanda especially since the concept of collocations is not readily known by native speakers, rather just linguists and some language teachers. It's a technical term so for most every day Joes to appreciate the utility of such a book, examples are most definitely needed.
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Monkeyz
The example given on Amazon was that in English we say "take a bath" or "have a bath" but the correct word in Japanese (translated into English) is "enter."
It seems really useful, if it's stuff like that. Though I find that most of the time, Japanese seems to use "do" with nouns. But it would still be good to know which were definitely "do" and which had other verbs.
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bicultural
Yes, some examples would have been nice.
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HenoHenoMohe
2100 yen at Amazon.co.jp and only $13.50 on Amazon.com. Why such a difference? Japanese companies trying to rip people off as usual or they don't care about making a profit abroad?
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Laguna
Discounting books (as well as periodicals) published within Japan is illegal; that is why the only book sales you'll see are of imports (or used books). This was ostensibly done to protect price gouging of those living in rural areas, who had fewer outlet choices; the rise of Internet shopping, though, has certainly removed that rationale.
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