READERSVOICE.COM aims to give a few interesting samples from out of print and sometimes forgotten books. These often have a lot of juice still in them. And in many cases they are better than anything new that’s come out.
Recently I found a copy of Japanese Conversation-Grammar by Oreste Vaccari and Mrs Enko Elisa Vaccari. It’s a heavy hardback, published in Tokyo in 1973, with the tasteful understated cover you sometimes see in older Asian books. This was the 24th edition. It was originally published in 1937.
I thought Why not. Learning a new language is like going into another world. And the Japanese world would be a good one to visit.
The book starts with a quote from a Seventh Century A.D. collection of poems, the Manyoshu: Words have a soul, and may create any kind of emotion, among which happiness is supreme.
The book is full of simple lessons. It’s a good book to dip into at leisure as you slowly piece together the language. Until you get distracted and sidetracked onto something else.
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