Colloquial Japaneseby Noboru Inamoto

Colloquial Japanese by Noboru InamotoReview by: Roland A. Lange and Gerald B. MathiasThe Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 9, No. 2/3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 87-94Published by: American Association of Teachers of JapaneseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/489375 .

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REVIEWS

Noboru Inamoto. Colloquial Japanese. Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1972. 436 pp.

This book offers a simple introduction to Jap- anese grammar and idiom presented through a modified Hepburn romanization. The first chapter is devoted to pronunciation, while each of the remaining nineteen covers one or more points of grammar. The basic lesson format consists of a Japanese text with English translation, followed by vocabulary lists, "Important Notes on Construction and Gramar," drills, and exercises.

Inamoto's frequent pattern diagrams will help students to grasp the relationship between the struc- ture of a Japanese sentence and its meaning. Other good points are the inclusion of translation exercises to give students practice with new constructions, and the early (Chapter 10) introduction and frequent use of the narrative style. This last will be especially helpful to students who plan to go on to study the written language.

There is no doubt that Colloquial Japanese can be of help to the foreign resident in Japan who wants to learn something of Japanese without embarking on a prolonged course of study. However, because of cer- tain weak points, I hesitate to recommend it for use in a course for serious students of the language. The deficiencies referred to are inconsistency in presenting new vocabulary, occasional lapses in English and Japanese, and errors in the presentation of phonology and grammar. A few examples of each will suffice to illustrate.

VOCABULARY: Inamoto's vocabulary lists seem to lack any consistent format for the presentation of vocabulary. (The following examples are drawn from Chapter 11, but any chapter would do.) Sometimes he uses a paradigmatic approach as on p. 170 where expressions concerning rain are presented in a group: ame, ame ga furu, ame g furimasu, ame ga futte imasu, ame ga furimashita. At other times a single item is given, as when (p. 171) we find yobimashita sandwiched in between sassoku ikimashoo and mita. Furthermore, the form given in the vocabulary list is not always



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identical to the one in the lesson text. In the example above, none of the forms concerning rain is precisely the same as the ame ga futte iru which actually appears in the text (p. 166). Vocabulary items can be difficult to locate because the lists give them in order of appearance in the text, rather than in alphabetical order. The difficulty is com- pounded when there is an error, as in the case of tomodachi which appears second in the text but fourth on the list (pp. 166, 171). Finally, pitch accent is given for only a few words on the vocabulary lists, with no stated or obvious system for choosing one word over another. On pp. 170-3, for instance, pitch accent is given for shibai 'drama,' but not for odori 'dance' or gekijoo 'theatre;' for ame 'rain' and yuki 'snow,' but not for tenki 'weather.'

ENGLISH: The use of English is sometimes unidi- omatic, especially when presenting translations of the Japanese text. On pp. 76, 78, for instance we find the following translations:

Kore wa atsukute kuroi hon desu. This is a thick and black book.

Issatsu no hon wa usukute akai kyookasho desu. One book is a th-n and red textbook.

Ippon no empitsu to nisatsu no hon g miemasu. I can see one pencil and two volumes oF books.

The "thick and black" problem can be explained by Inamoto's decision to adopt a fixed translation of ". . .and" for the adjectival gerund (p. 82). Appar- ently he did not consider the awkwardness of such a translation when used with sentences in which the adjectives precede the noun, leading one to expect a rendering of "adjective, adjective noun" (thick, black book, etc.) Inamoto's translation of nisatsu no hon as "two volumes of books" is not so readily accounted for, because in this case his translation is less consistent. On p. 78, immediately after having translated gosatsu no hon as "five volumes of books," and nisatsu as "two volumes," he translates nisatsu as "two books."

English glosses in the vocabulary lists are sometimes inadequate; on p. 170 issho and issho ni are



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both given as "together" without indicating their difference in meaning. Awkward English also appears in the grammar notes. On p. 156 we find:

"REVIEW OF DE, NI, AND E: Because of similarity in the meanings of de, ni, and e, the importance of having a clear definition of the function of postpositions rather than giving simple English equivalents to postpositions is repeated here."

JAPANESE: It is always a risky business for one who lacks a native speaker's intuition to designate examples of Japanese as "unnatural." Still, I would like to point out a few instances where Inamoto gives sentences which seem to depart from normal usage. The first two examples occur in Chapter 19, "Superpolite and Humble Forms," which Inamoto has adopted (pp. 12, 13) from Reischauer's Elementary Japanese for College Students. Dialogue number 8 on p. 346 gives the following:

(a) Anata no otomodachi wa mada New York (sic) ni irasshaimasu ka?

(b) Hai, Tanaka-sama wa New York de hataraite iras shaimasu.

In (b) the use of -sama with a proper name seems strange in any case, and doubly so when the speaker is discussing this own friend with a third party. The relationship of the speaker to the subject of the verb also makes the use of irassharu strange in (b). Again, 28 (a) on p. 351 gives us:

Ima koogi o nasatte irassharu o-kata wa donata- sama de gozaimasu ka?

In order to be consistent with the deference level indicated by the use of nasatte irassharu and o-kata, one would normally expect de irasshaimasu rather than de gozaimasu. A third example is found on p. 287 wEere a redcap addresses a customer as "anata," something highly unlikely to occur in Japan.

PHONOLOGY: In the opening line of his preface Inamoto writes that the methods and ideas presented in Colloquial Japanese, "were conceived during the dark days oF-1942." In terms of linguistic description this seems quite plausible, because his treatment



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of Japanese phonology and grammar appears to be totally innocent of influence from the advances in the analysis of Japanese made after 1942 by Bloch and others. His treatment of phonology fails to adequately describe the value of the syllabic nasal phoneme /N/ in its various environments, and to make a distinction between it and the short nasal phonemes /n/ and /m/. He segments Japanese words into "syllables" (which he describes as being of equal length), assigning long consonants other than the nasal to the preceding syllable rather than to a separate mora. He does advise students to "make a slight pause" after the first part of a "double consonant," but students may still be tempted to give the same pronunciation time to issho (Inamoto's is-sho) as to dewa (de-wa) (p. 172), thus missing the extra beat which issho requires. When Inamoto describes kya as a combination of ki plus ya in which the i is dropped when speaking rapiTly (p..20) one wonders-how students will pro- nounce kya when they are speaking slowly.

The major phonological problem, however, is pitch accent. As noted above, pitch accent is rarely given in the vocabulary lists, but the accent of words in context is indicated by the "intonation line" over each sentence in the Japanese text through the first fifteen chapters. Inamoto's treatment of pitch accent states out on a defeatist note which the following admonition (p. 20):

"Since pitch accent is not easily learned by the student, and because it is possible to under- stand the meaning even if a different accent is used, the student should make no great effort to follow the accent marks too closely."

This turns out to be sage advice, because the pitch accent indicated by the intonation line is often in error. Even in Inamoto's explanation of intonation (p. 20), the second of the two examples used (o-re wa hon de'irka.) mistakenly places the accent on de rat-her than on ho.

Inamoto's most frequent error in depicting pitch accent in his assignment of the same pitch level to two or more syllables at the beginning of a word (leading one to suspect possible influence from an accent system from Western Japan). The following examples are chosen at random:



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p. 57: tsukue no ue ni

p. 88: tookyoo to oosaka

p. 90: yooshiki no

p. 128: kyoo wa

p. 147: ooKii

p. 148: erebeetaa

p. 186: Beikoku e okuritai desu.

p. 187: keredomo, kookuuin, -yuubin wa

Conflicting examples indicate that the intonation line

was drawn carelessly, so the publisher and printer

may share some of the blame for its inaccuracy. On

p. 148 erebeetaa vies with erebeetaa, while

teikoku hoteru on p. 89 competes with te-ikoko hoteru

on p. 90. The reader will have no trouble finding his own examples of such contradiction.

GRAMMAR: Inamoto's conception of grammar may be inferred from a statement on p. 11: ". . . because Japanese is a highly logical language, it is possible to explain grammatically most of the basic constructions." His actual explanations reflect a mixture of traditional Japanese kana-oriented analysis (e.g. his description of verb bases and suffixes on pp. 403-10) and traditional Western grammar based upon English translation (e.g. his distinction on pp. 37, 38 between eigo no (noun) and watakushi no (noun) which he labels a "quasi adjective" and a "noun in the pos- sessive case" respectively). There are many points in such a treatment with which one might disagree, but I will limit myself to citing a few of the cases in which the explanations are patently in error, or otherwise likely to mislead students.

One general problem is Inamoto's method of expo- sition; he often begins with a statement which is too general or otherwise erroneous, and corrects it by means of conflicting statements or examples given later. For example, his note on compound sentences (p. 246) begins: "There are two methods by which simple sentences can be joined, and a compound sentence formed," and then goes on to give three methods. On p. 200 he states that nara 'if' is used in the same



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way as kara 'therefore,' and then immediately gives an example showing that nara follows a noun directly whereas kara does not. His note on the verbal gerund plus imasu (p. 50) begins:

"The te form of a verb plus imasu . . . signifies progressive action in Japanese, and it is translated:

1. He is reading . . . 2. I am playing . . . etc."

It is not until p. 253 that a footnote informs us, vis-a-vis komatte imasu, that "the progressive form can be used to indicate the STATE OF BEING (sic)."

Inamoto sometimes describes two different items as though they were identical. On p. 139 he identifies "kai" as the numeral classifier for both 'floor' and 'Etime' (in spite of the fact that his own examples show san-gai for 'third floor' and san-kai for 'three times'). On p. 423 "moo" is listed as having the two meanings 'more' and 'already,' while a note on p. 113 gives "kiru" as having the meanings of both 'to wear' and 'to cut.' Even if we assume that the author was referring to phonemic rather than to morphemic entitles, we must object on the grounds that in each case the items which he has thus lumped together are separated by phonemic distinctions (/kai/ vs. /kai,-gai/; /m6o/ vs. /moo/ and /kiru/ vs. /kiru/). In the translation exer- cise on pp. 316, 317, two Japanese "equivalents" are given for each of the English sentences numbered 6-15. For example:

6. I had him read the letter (for you). Ano hito ni tegami o yonde moratta. Ano hito wa tegami o yonde kureta.

Even without going into details of translation, it is obvious that the two Japanese sentences cannot both be accurate renditions of the English, for the simple reason that they have different subjects and pred- icates. To treat them as being the same is equivalent to presenting an English lesson for Japanese students in which "I had him read it," and "He read it for me" are both treated as acceptable translations of ano hito wa tegami o yonde kureta.

Sometimes the explanations in -Colloquial Japanese dissappoint by leaving out important details which would make them much more complete. For instance,



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when dealing with verbs for giving and receiving (pp. 311,2), Inamoto fails to mention the vital fact that ageru and yaru are never used when the person receiving the gift is the speaker himself. On p. 391 the adverbial forms -zu ni and -nai de are treated together in a manner whiET implies identity of usage. The explanation would have been strengthened by mention of the fact that while -nai de is used directly before kudasai, hoshii, etc. in expressing negative requests, -zu ni is not. In explaining the formation of the verbal gerund (p. 51) Inamoto should have men- tioned that the verb iku 'go' is an exception to his rule that a final -ku in the non-past informal indica- tive of yodan verbs becomes -ite in the gerund.

In closing I would like to mention two items which do not fit neatly into any of the previous categories: On p. 51 Inamoto states that the gerund of a verb is "an incomplete verb, having no meaning when used alone." Obviously such a description ig- nores the frequent use of gerund-final utterances as informal requests, e.g. chotto matte, tasukete, and so forth. On p. 406 Inamoto gives the incredible translation of "can, able to" for the formal verbal ending -masu (which he correctly identifies on p. 114 as "polite present"). The problem stems from his attempt to describe the form arukemasu 'can walk' as an inflected form of the verb aruku 'walk,' rather than, as is the case, an inflected form of the derived verb arukeru 'can walk.' The above list of errors is not exhaustive.

Roland A. Lange (Columbia University)



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Editor's Note:

(The following correspondence was received after the above review had been prepared for publication).

To the Editor:

I took the liberty of sending Prof. Roland Lange a pre- publication copy of my review of his The Phonology of Eighth- Century Japanese. He has pointed out two misinterpretations in that review which are serious enough that I would like to ask for the opportunity to set the record straight.

On the sixth page of the review I report incorrectly that allographs for OJ a could be correlated on the basis of either both being used to write ame or both being used to write aki. The sentence I quote from p. 102 of Lange, "[two ongana to be correlated] must share the same environment in at least two forms" ends in the original text with "i.e. in two separate words or in two examples of the same word." Properly inter- preted, this means that not just either, but rather both, of the aki and the ame examples were necessary. This vastly reduces, as a practical consideration, the danger of circularity noted in the review.

In the next paragraph on the same page of the review I note that Lange does not present evidence allowing him to link the five

yo-type syllables, and leap to the conclusion that the linking is erroneous. I should have known that it would be more like Lange to make an error of omission (instances of yopi "evening" in Man'yoshu poems 4399 and 3639, yobi "calling" in 892, 3643, 3993, 01U and 3622, and the particle yori in 3737 and 3655) than of reasoning. Nevertheless, the statistical tendency not to use the two sets of yo kana interchangeably outweighs the cases of confusion of the types adequately for the establishment of the two types, as in the case of to elaborated in the review.

Gerald B. Mathias



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Colloquial Japaneseby Noboru Inamoto