Do you want to learn Japanese the fast, fun and easy way? And do you want to master daily conversations and speak like a native? Then this is the book for you. Learn Japanese: Must-Know Japanese Slang Words & Phrases by JapanesePod101 is designed for Beginner-level learners. You learn the top 100 must-know slang words and phrases that are used in everyday speech. All were hand-picked by our team of Japanese teachers and experts. Here’s how the lessons work: • Every Lesson is Based on a Theme • You Learn Slang Words or Phrases Related to That Theme • Check the Translation & Explanation on How to Use Each One And by the end, you will have mastered 100+ Japanese Slang Words & phrases!

My First Book of Japanese Words is a beautifully illustrated book that introduces young children to Japanese language and culture through everyday words. The words profiled in this book are all commonly used in the Japanese language and are both informative and fun for English-speaking children to learn. The goals of My First Book of Japanese Words are multiple: to familiarize children with the sounds and structure of Japanese speech, to introduce core elements of Japanese culture, to illustrate the ways in which languages differ in their treatment of everyday sounds and to show how, through cultural importation, a single word can be shared between languages. Both teachers and parents will welcome the book's cultural and linguistic notes and appreciate how the book is organized in a familiar ABC structure. Each word is presented in Kanji (when applicable), Kana, and Romanized form (Romaji). With the help of this book, we hope more children (and adults) will soon be a part of the 125 million people worldwide that speak Japanese!

The volumes in this series set out to provide a contemporary record of the spread and development of the English language in South, Southeast, and East Asia from both a linguistic and literary perspective. Each volume will reflect themes that cut across national boundaries, including the study of language policies; globalization and linguistic imperialism; English in the media; English in law, government and education; 'hybrid' Englishes; and the bilingual creativity manifested by the vibrant creative writing found in a swathe of Asian societies. This book gives an in-depth analysis of the use of the English language in modern Japan. It explores the many ramifications the Japanese-English language and culture contact situation has for not only Japanese themselves, but also others in the international community. Data for this book has been gathered using anthropological ethnographic fieldwork, augmented by archival sources, written materials, and items from popular culture and the mass media. An interdisciplinary approach, including those of anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive science and symbolic anthropology, is taken in the exploration of the topics here. This book's arguments focus on four major theoretical linguistic and social issues, namely the place of the Japanese-English case in the larger context of 'World Englishes'; the place of the Japanese-English case in a general theory of language and culture contact; how Japanese English informs problems of categorization, meaning construction and cognition; and what it says about the social construction of identity and sense of self, nationalism and race. This book will be of interest to linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, and all readers who are interested in language contact, sociolinguistics, English as an international language, and World Englishes. It will also appeal to those who are interested in Japan and popular culture.

Benny Lewis, who speaks over ten languages—all self-taught—runs the largest language-learning blog in the world, Fluent In 3 Months. Lewis is a full-time "language hacker," someone who devotes all of his time to finding better, faster, and more efficient ways to learn languages. Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World is a new blueprint for fast language learning. Lewis argues that you don't need a great memory or "the language gene" to learn a language quickly, and debunks a number of long-held beliefs, such as adults not being as good of language learners as children.

Following the first volume of Remembering the Kanji, the present work provides students with helpful tools for learning the pronunciation of the kanji. Behind the notorious inconsistencies in the way the Japanese language has come to pronounce the characters it received from China lie several coherent patterns. Identifying these patterns and arranging them in logical order can reduce dramatically the amount of time spent in the brute memorization of sounds unrelated to written forms. Many of the “primitive elements,” or building blocks, used in the drawing of the characters also serve to indicate the “Chinese reading” that particular kanji use, chiefly in compound terms. By learning one of the kanji that uses such a “signal primitive,” one can learn the entire group at the same time. In this way, Remembering the Kanji 2 lays out the varieties of phonetic pattern and offers helpful hints for learning readings, that might otherwise appear completely random, in an efficient and rational way. Individual frames cross-reference the kanji to alternate readings and to the frame in volume 1 in which the meaning and writing of the kanji was first introduced. A parallel system of pronouncing the kanji, their “Japanese readings,” uses native Japanese words assigned to particular Chinese characters. Although these are more easily learned because of the association of the meaning to a single word, the author creates a kind of phonetic alphabet of single syllable words, each connected to a simple Japanese word, and shows how they can be combined to help memorize particularly troublesome vocabulary. The 4th edition has been updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the government in 2010 as “general-use” kanji.

Languages change over time. No matter how hard we try to control and regulate them, they exist in a state of endless metamorphosis. This does not mean, though, that we should simply stand by and watch as language devolves into nonsense. What should we do, then? Recognizing the inevitability of change is a given, of course. But we must also navigate the delicate line between the pull of popular trends and the urge to cling blindly to the ways of the past. The ideal balance, Professor Nakanishi argues in this book, lies in being "one step behind the times," which is the best approach for wielding.

"Simple text paired with themed photos invite the reader to learn to speak Japanese"--Provided by publisher.