Features
Beyond the focus on the spoken language alone, the text has a number of unusual features.
The text is centered around a sequence of dialogs and grammar drills, which are practiced and memorized, and detailed linguistic analysis of Japanese grammar. Vocabulary is taught in the context of these dialogs, rather than as isolated lists. This approach – dialogs and pattern practice – is heavily influenced by the audio-lingual method (ALM), which has since fallen out of favor, though the text is not strictly speaking an ALM text, providing grammar explanations rather than only memorization, for instance.
The terminology is at times non-standard – for example, 形容動詞 are referred to as na-nominals, as they behave grammatically almost identically to 名詞 (nouns), which are clearly nominals. This choice has some support in Japanese scholarship, though traditionally these words are referred to as "na-adjectives" or "adjectival nouns". Similarly, the gender differences in spoken Japanese are referred to as blunt/gentle, rather than male/female.
Another example of grammatically correct but non-standard pedagogical choices is that Japanese adjectives are translated not to English adjectives, but to English predicates, as this is how they function grammatically in Japanese. For example, 小さい (chiisai) is translated as "is small", rather than simply "small".
The book is written exclusively in romaji, making no use of kana or kanji, though kana plus kanji text is available as supplementary texts. The form of romaji used is based closely on the Nihon-shiki form of romanization (which is often used in Japan), but which differs from Hepburn romanization, which is more commonly used in English-speaking countries. The romanization system attempts to follow the Japanese syllable structure to simplify grammatical relationships, rather than attempting to represent the sound. For example, ち is represented by "ti", as it falls into the たちつてと "t-" series, which is uniformly represented in JSL as ta/ti/tu/te/to, though ち is pronounced closer to English "chi" (as in "cheese"), rather than "ti" (as in "tee" or "tea"); in Hepburn these are represented as ta/chi/tsu/te/to, which are phonetically more suggestive (following standard English orthography), but obscure the Japanese syllable structure. In JSL, the text is intended only as a reference, not a guide to pronunciation, with the audio instead being the pronunciation guide.
Another uncommon feature of the text is that it emphasizes Japanese pitch accent in the words, according to standard Japanese. Pitch varies across dialects, and is not taught in many textbooks, but is indicated in JSL and emphasized in instruction.
Read more about this topic: Japanese: The Spoken Language
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)