Complete idiots guide book is confusing

I recently bought a book to help me improve my japanese but i am starting to wonder whether it was a good idea. The book i bought is this one "The complete idiot's guide - Conversational Japanese, second edition". Now i am learning from the book but it seems that everything i am learning from this book is incorrect according to my japanese friend.

An example: In the 'te'-form section the author refers to two types of verb endings; (i) and (e) [see attached image]. My friend says (and i've also read about this) that all japanese verbs end with 'u'. What is the author refering to?



Also within this book the author says that word order within a sentence (when speaking in japanese) is not important but when i showed my friend the sentences from the book she replied that although she could understand them they were 'unnatural', i am assuming she means that the sentence sounds strange to a native japanese speaker.

Who is correct, my japanese friend or this book? (Note the book is also authored by a native japanese speaker). Should i continue using the book because i don't want to learn from a source that is going to teach me an incorrect way of speaking japanese.

Another thing about the book: The title say "conversational japanese"; is there a big difference between writing japanese and speaking japanese?

The picture shows the -masu stem(the i form) of ichidan verbs, not the dictionary form.

Japanese verb conjugation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

richards said:

Also within this book the author says that word order within a sentence (when speaking in japanese) is not important but when i showed my friend the sentences from the book she replied that although she could understand them they were 'unnatural', i am assuming she means that the sentence sounds strange to a native japanese speaker.

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See the following thread.

Donno gurai (どんのぐらい）＋ particle in the sentence? | Japan Forum

richards said:

Another thing about the book: The title say "conversational japanese"; is there a big difference between writing japanese and speaking japanese?

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Yes.

Toritoribe, would you say that there is more difference between the conversational and written forms of Japanese than is the case in English? (I'm talking about the vocabulary and grammar structures used, not the actual details of the writing system.)

Yes, as you've seen in your learning materials. For instance, sentence final particles or expressions like じゃない？ are usually not used in written Japanese, but they are almost essential in daily conversation. News announcer's speech is relatively close to written Japanese, though.

Toritoribe said:

For instance, sentence final particles or expressions like じゃない？ are usually not used in written Japanese, but they are almost essential in daily conversation.

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Yeah, I read somewhere that じゃない is plain form and じゃありません is a polite form, but I did never think about with that angle.
:?

I'm talking about じゃない that performs like a sentence final particle, not a colloquial form of ではない. See this thread. 気遣うじゃない can't be rephrased as 気遣うではない.

Toritoribe said:

Yes, as you've seen in your learning materials. For instance, sentence final particles or expressions like じゃない？ are usually not used in written Japanese, but they are almost essential in daily conversation. News announcer's speech is relatively close to written Japanese, though.

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However, English conversations are often also full of filler and padding words and expressions such as "I mean", "you know", "like", "well", "yeah?" (inviting agreement), and so on, that are usually omitted in written English. Is that not the same thing?

---------- Post added at 01:58 ---------- Previous post was at 01:53 ----------

Toritoribe said:

I'm talking about じゃない that performs like a sentence final particle, not a colloquial form of ではない. See this thread. 気遣うじゃない can't be rephrased as 気遣うではない.

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This may be a thread I have already seen or participated in, but I would like to check it. Unfortunately the link is broken. I expect it is probably that stoopid forum bug again. Did you find some way to fix it or work around it? I can't remember now...

Oh, sorry for the link. I just fixed it. The way I found is here.

Polite forms or formal speeches are relatively close to written Japanese. The difference is especially in casual conversation, as in the thread I linked above.
Unlike those "fillers" in English, the meaning of the sentence could be changed when sentence final particles omitted.

...the meaning of the sentence could be changed when sentence final particles omitted.

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By this, do you mean particles like が、尾、荷、から、まで、？

I read the other threads you posted but the word order problem is not completely clear to me, to help my explanation better i will type two examples from the book

じょんがりさにすしおあげました （John to Lisa sushi gave)
じょんがすしおりさにあげました （John sushi to Lisa gave)

The author says that the above (although scrambled) still means 'John gave sushi to Lisa' in japanse because japanese is not a fixed-word order language so scrambling the words isn't such a big issue as it would be in english.

じょんがすしおりさにあげました is wrong.

あげました or verb in general must modify by を. It sound strange to me.

richards said:

By this, do you mean particles like が、尾、荷、から、まで、？

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Particles are always written in hiragana. を is used as a particle instead of お, as same as は vs わ.

Sentence final particles/Sentence ending particles(終助詞[しゅうじょし] in Japanese) are different those particles("case particles" 格助詞[かくじょし] in Japanese). As in the name 終("end"), they are used at the end of a sentence.

richards said:

I read the other threads you posted but the word order problem is not completely clear to me, to help my explanation better i will type two examples from the book

じょんがりさにすしおあげました （John to Lisa sushi gave)
じょんがすしおりさにあげました （John sushi to Lisa gave)

The author says that the above (although scrambled) still means 'John gave sushi to Lisa' in japanse because japanese is not a fixed-word order language so scrambling the words isn't such a big issue as it would be in english.

Click to expand...

Yes, that's right. Even りさにジョンがすしをあげました or すしをジョンがりさにあげました are understandable, as I wrote in another thread, since particles に, が and を indicate the function of the preceding noun.

I now understand what you mean by は v わ 、を v お. Thank you for clearing it up for me

ありがとうございます