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Title: Dirty Japanese: Everyday Slang from "What's Up?" to "F*ck Off!" (Dirty Everyday Slang)
ISBN: 1569755655
Author:
Matt Fargo
Publicate Date: 2007-04-26
Publish: 2007-04-26
List Price: $10.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $5.26
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $5.44
Amazon Merchant Price: $8.00
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Huge disappointment.
I wanted to learn some Japanese slang. I have about ten different Japanese phrasebooks and dictionaries that I use very often. [ By that, I mean daily. ] This book is NOT one of them! The author seemed like just some guy who thought he'd try to brag about going to Japan.. So that was distracting enough. But I bought this before I really knew the difference between female and male sentence-ending particles. He never explained which gender said what. Now that I know, I'm even more angry that most of it that wasn't gross was meant for men only. So, if you're just some chick who loves the Japanese language, like me, do not get this book. The only phrases for women make us all look bad!
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2: awesome!!!! clurtural relation
This is great for one on one conversations...makes us less like a tourist. The exchanges students here thought we were cool...my cousins shared this
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3: Be careful!!!!
By just looking few pages...
Becareful that many words are dead words and very funny.
It is very funny book to read, but I dont recomend to learn from it (if you dont want to be funny person)
However, if you are planning to go to Japan, it will be a great attention getter book (^-^)
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4: A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT
I have a fairly large collection of Japanese language textbooks (many of which I've bought at Amazon over the years). Much to my surprise, I've found that I consistently use all of them and none of them collect much dust.
However, with this particular title, I've finally found a real dud among my Japanese language learning texts.
The biggest problem is the lack of an index (which pretty much means that, while some people may find the book funny to thumb through, they won't find it useful as a reference book).
The second big problem is that the author injects far too much of himself into the book. He very loudly and aggressively wants us all to know that he is the hippest person to ever walk the streets of Japan.
That, combined with his endless, jarring hip hop/street slang is very distracting and annoying (it was annoying enough almost two decades ago when the middle-class Vanilla Ice tried to convince us he came from the 'hood; it's even more annoying now).
I would also fault the author's grasp of the Japanese language. His "English" translations of a lot of phrases include many expletives that simply aren't there in the original Japanese text.
Last, but not least, is that the author doesn't seem very well informed about Japan. He informs us that Japanese cops don't carry guns (not true) and that they're the biggest jerks in the world. The fact is, if the Tokyo police were indeed "jerks" to the author, he richly deserved it (as he gleefully spends much of the book talking about all the fights and reckless trouble that he got into while in Japan). For the record, I've visited Japan and found it to the safest, most peaceful nation I've ever seen. The Japanese people are some of the most polite folks on earth--but you'd think they were all a bunch of violent thugs after reading this book.
The world still needs a good comprehensive reference book that rounds up Japan's trendy language and street slang. This book isn't it.
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5: Beware...
I am a student of the Japanese language so I bought a copy of "Dirty Japanese" thinking it would nicely round out my education, which is mostly from staid textbooks. Well, I showed it to a bunch of my Japanese friends, and they were laughing their a**es off at the extent to which many of the phrases in the book were either inaccurate or simply dated. I admit this book is somewhat humorous to read even if you don't speak Japanese at all, but beware, you might not be learning anything useful by reading it.
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