Re: Basic Connections, Making Your Japanese Flow (Kakuko Shoji, 1997)

linderd wrote:
I stumbled across this book (http://www.amazon.com/dp/4770028601) at a
second hand shop for 600 yen, so I bought it. I've been reading through
it as a bit of revision, and... well. There are a lot of example
sentences, but sometimes I have no doubts about some of them.

Has anyone read this book? If so, what did you think of the examples?

The book is new to me, but I know Kakuko Shoji, my colleague (when I was
still) at UH, well. She has been involved in a number of worthwhile
publications. (There could, I suppose, be more than one Kakuko Shoji,
though.)

Here are a few examples:

１）
手紙を開けないでおきました
Trans.
I did not open the letter. （P60)

２）
Q:そんな派手なドレス、買うの？
A:買いはしないけど、ちょっと着てだけみようかと思って。
Trans.
Q: Are you really going to buy such a guady dress?
A: I don't intend to buy it, but I thought I would at least try it
on. （P32)

３）
家から送って来ましたので、どうぞ。
Trans.
These were sent here by my family. Please have some (eg. fruit). (P78)

There is nothing wrong with these particularly, and perhaps my
complaints are just due to a lack of understanding on my part, but:

1) Why 開けないで? 開ける is a verb, so how can it be joined to
another sentence using で?

I prefer not to thing of that as で at all, on the grounds that you
can't have で after an i-adjective. Better to think of ないで as an
adverbial negative formant. It's one that you would use to convey a
sense of "without (doing)."

2) This is an example of using は in a negative form, but as in the
previous examples on the same page,
疲れてはいないけど、高くはないけど、if the は is
removed it should still make sense. Does 買いしないけど。。。
make sense? (I've never heard someone say it, but I suppose I've heard
買い物をしたい quite often).

There's no point in saying *買いしない or *買いする, but if you want to
get a は or a も in there, you have to split it like that.

3) Although saying this aloud sounds fine to me, technically I thought
から but not ので could be used after a verb in ます形. For
example,
ご迷惑をしましたからどもすみませんでした。I've
heard that before, but I've never heard someone say
ご迷惑をしましたのでどもすみませんでした。

The choice of から or ので doesn't depend on register (although ので is
often more polite than から, and I think that is the case here). Both
occur quite naturally in the polite and the familiar registers.

Those are just three random pages I opened to after finishing the book,
which doesn't leave me thrilled about how great it was.

All the other reviews online I've read seem to say it was really good
though... are these examples correct, and I simply don't understand
them, or are they actually wrong?

They look good to me, but I am famous for writing and speaking funny
Japanese.

Bart
.

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