Hi everyone,
I just wanted to draw people’s attention to two new Japanese grammar ebooks I have written. They are titled *Your Japanese Grammar Skeleton* and *Fleshing Out Your Japanese Grammar Skeleton*, respectively. Rather than describe the first book from scratch, I thought I would include the introduction and the table of contents here for those who happen to be interested. It’s all included below.
You can get the book here: [https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Grammar-Skeleton-Samuel-Lynas-ebook/dp/B0BTMQ22KD/ref=sr\_1\_1?crid=6A11Z2U943WM&keywords=your+japanese+grammar+skeleton&qid=1676034853&sprefix=your+japanese+grammar+skeleton%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-1](https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Grammar-Skeleton-Samuel-Lynas-ebook/dp/B0BTMQ22KD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=6A11Z2U943WM&keywords=your+japanese+grammar+skeleton&qid=1676034853&sprefix=your+japanese+grammar+skeleton%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-1)
Or here, without Amazon’s commission!
[https://www.buymeacoffee.com/learnjapanU](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/learnjapanU)
I’ve been learning, speaking, and teaching foreign languages (Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin Chinese) for 27 years, and used to work as a translator in Japan. If you’re struggling with Japanese grammar, I’m sure you’ll find my books to be helpful. Good luck with your studies either way!
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**Table of Contents**
**Introduction** **3**
**Prelude: Plain Form vs. Polite Form** **5**
**Section 1** **6**
1) I-adjectives and Related Forms 6
2) Nouns and Na-adjectives 7
3) Verbs, Three Crucial Forms 8
4) Verbs, Affirmative Past and the Te-form 12
5) Expressing Obligation, Plus a Brief Introduction to the Particle が 13
6) Giving Permission, Plus an Introduction to the Particle を 14
7) Expressing Obligation, Plus a Brief Introduction to the Particle は 16
8) To Try Doing Something, -てみる, The Particle に 17
9) The ‘Masu’ Stem and Some Uses Thereof 18
10) The Conjunction ‘But’ 19
Recap: What Have We Done So Far? 20
**Interlude 1: は, が, and を** **21**
**Section 2** **26**
11) Expressing ‘If’ and ‘When’, -たら, とき 26
12) Doing Something Before or After Something Else 29
13) Communicating Sequence and Cause with the Te-form 30
14) Introduction to Noun Modification 32
15) Noun Modification with Empty の 35
16) The Potential Form 39
17) Asking Questions 40
18) Embedded Questions 42
19) More Ways of Saying ‘If’: -ば and と 44
20) The Final Way of Saying ‘If’: Nara 49
Recap 51
**Interlude 2: More Stuff on は, が, and を** **52**
**Section 3** **56**
21) A Very Important Particle and its Many Applications: も 56
22) Likelihood and Probability 60
23) Counters 64
24) Intentions, Desires, Plans 66
25) Reporting and Quoting 67
26) Evidentiality 69
27) Causation, から and ので 74
28) In Order To, So As To, So That, ために, ように 76
29) The Wacky World of わけ 78
30) Expressing ‘Just’ and ‘Only’ with だけ and しか 83
Recap 86
**Interlude 3: Yet More Stuff About は and が** **87**
**Section 4** **91**
31) Directionality with Auxiliary Verbs, くれる, あげる, もらう 91
32) Expressing Expectation, はず 96
33) Offering Explanation and Context, のだ/んだ 98
34) Causative Structures 100
35) Passive Structures 102
36) Causative-Passive Structures 105
37) Past Experiences, Habitual Actions, ことがある 107
38) A Comparison of Two Important Nominalisers: の and こと 108
39) Requests and Commands 110
40) Sentence-Ending Particles 112
Recap 113
**Interlude 4: How Can the Japanese Leave So Much Out?** **114**
**Section 5** **119**
41) Question Cancelling in Japanese 119
42) Doing A While B, ながら, あいだ 121
43) Comparisons 122
44) Rhetorical Questions 125
45) Doing Something as Preparation, -ておく 126
46) Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 127
47) Doing Things Irrevocably, -てしまう 129
48) Adverbs, -くする, -くなる, にする, になる 131
49) Deciding, Things Being Decided, ことになる, ことにする 132
50) The Volitional Form, 行こう, 行こうと思う, 行こうとする 133
# Introduction
This book has been written with the objective of filling a gap in the market for Japanese grammar instruction. Commonly used textbooks such as *Genki* and *Japanese for Everyone*, though not without their merits, are weighed down with many dense pages of exercises and vocabulary lists. Furthermore, the amount of time they dedicate to explaining the grammar of the Japanese language is surprisingly small.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have dedicated Japanese grammar references such as *A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar*. Such books, though impressive and important sources for dedicated students of Japanese, are not structured presentations of Japanese grammar. Rather, they are alphabetically-ordered works into which students must dip as and when necessary. It seems unlikely that even a dedicated student could learn Japanese grammar primarily from such works.
It is difficult for beginning students of Japanese to find a single, concise source that will provide them with the grammar they need to really get to grips with the language. Too often, grammar points are presented in isolation, and their significance in the language as a whole is not explained. Other works are happy to present ‘Telling the Time’ or ‘Family Members’ as fundamental grammar topics, despite them being nothing of the sort. What is required, it seems, is a readable, casually-delivered yet intellectually serious attempt to bring together in a single work enough Japanese grammar to facilitate the further acquisition of the language.
Hence the name of this book: *Your Japanese Grammar Skeleton*. My claim is that if the reader can process (not just read, but process!) the information herein, they will not find *any* new piece of Japanese grammar they might encounter in the future to be alien or baffling. Difficult, perhaps. Confusing, very possibly. But alien or baffling, no. The grammar in this book constitutes the skeleton that the continuing studies of the dedicated student will go on to flesh out.
A brief discussion of the book’s structure will be helpful here. It consists of five sections, each of which is divided up into ten items. Each item consists of a presentation on a specific topic in Japanese grammar, though other pieces of information separate from, but relevant to, the chosen topic will also be introduced as necessary. At the end of each section there will be a short recap, where we briefly consider the material presented in the section in question. Before the first section, we will have a prelude, and before each of the other sections, an interlude, in which we consider at length some of the thorniest topics in Japanese grammar.
The book presents no exercises or practice drills. It does, on the other hand, present an abundance of example sentences to allow you to see Japanese grammar in action. Japanese sentences are presented in two versions: with and without kanji. They are not presented in romaji. Students who cannot yet read hiragana should learn it before attempting to use the book. They will need to learn it eventually anyway, and it is really not as difficult as it might seem.
My presentation of Japanese grammar will undoubtedly fail to satisfy at least some of its readers. Some will say that it includes topics that are not important for beginners, others that it does not include certain topics that beginners do indeed need to know about. So be it. There exists no perfect presentation of the grammar of *any* language, and this presentation has been influenced by my own interests and idiosyncracies. I can only say that they are the interests and idiosyncracies of an author with a very long relationship with the Japanese language, who has thought extremely hard about how best to present it to those who are new to it.
One thing in closing. It was virtually impossible to limit the grammar in the example sentences to the grammar that had already been introduced. As such, students will certainly encounter, here and there, chunks of grammar they have not yet seen as they work through these sentences. This is not a reason to feel discouraged or perplexed. Keep working through the book and these mysterious chunks will gradually be introduced and explained.
1 comment
>It does, on the other hand, present an abundance of example sentences to allow you to see Japanese grammar in action
How many example sentences are we talking about? This was one of the pitfalls I found with Genki where there was almost no examples and anything that would be useful to learn is scattered amongst it’s many pages. And what about the sentences themselves? Are they worth memorising?