Japanese for All Occasions: Mastering Speech Styles from Casual to Honorific (+ CD-ROM)

In Japanese, register — the way you change your words according to who you are speaking with — plays a key role. The rules of register in Japanese are far more complicated than they are in English, but until now there hasn't been a book that lays it all out in an accessible format. Japanese for All Occasions is a much-needed introduction to this bewildering aspect of the language. Through 57 dialogues, veteran teacher Taeko Kamiya shows learners how the Japanese change their way of speaking depending on the social setting or their relationship with the listener, with examples ranging from casual to super polite. Chapters are ordered according to function (Introducing People, Identifying Things, etc.) so that learners can absorb the most common sentence patterns used in daily life at the same time that they study casual, polite, and honorific styles. Each one presents three similar dialogues that show contrasting styles of speech. Detailed notes explain the grammar or usage at work in the dialogues, and quizzes at the end of each chapter allow learners to test their understanding. Best of all, the book comes with a free CD containing all the dialogues, narrated by professional Japanese actors. For intermediate students and above.