Review of Croom Helm Descriptive Grammars: Japanese by Barry A Byrne

This book is more a scholarly resource than a book for beginners. It covers Syntax, Morphology, Phonology, Ideophones and Interjections, and Lexicon. Bad points: although there is kanji in the text, the examples are all in romaji. The text gives the appearance of being typed on a typewriter.

Good Points: many of the examples are based on a corpus of spoken Japanese, giving insight into real grammar that does not appear in textbooks for foreigners. Example "hitori moo ne hitori no sensei no koto tsui mo omoiukabemasu kedomo".

Nice Point: the scholarly apparatus includes [Hinds, Wako; personal communication].

☆ See all reviews by Barry A Byrne.