Tuttle Compact Japanese Dictionary, 2nd Edition. Samuel E. Martin

      

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      Tuttle

      Compact

       Japanese

       Dictionary

      Samuel E. Martin is the author of numerous books and papers on Japanese and Korean, including the definitive A Reference Grammar of Japanese and A Reference Grammar of Korean.

      Sayaka Khan has a BSC (Biology, 2000) from Waseda University. She has worked as a translator and interpreter for companies in various industries, such as patent offices, science think tanks, pharmaceutical firms, film productions, game companies, etc. She has established a translation corporation with her husband, Afaque Khan.

      Fred Perry has a BA (History, 1956) from Yale University as well as an MBA from St Sophia University, Tokyo (1984). He arrived in Japan in 1956, and continues to live there today. He has worked as a market researcher and consultant. Traveling throughout Japan as part of his job has provided the opportunity to learn about the local dialects spoken in different parts of the country.

      Tuttle

      Compact

       Japanese

       Dictionary

      Samuel E. Martin

       Revised and Updated by Sayaka Khan and Fred Perry

      TUTTLE Publishing

       Tokyo | Rutland, Vermont | Singapore

      Published by Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

       www.tuttlepublishing.com

      © 2007 by Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd

       This revised edition © 2011 by Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2011921097

       ISBN: 978-1-4629-1082-3 (ebook)

      This title was first published by Charles E. Tuttle Publishing in 1994 as Martin's Concise Japanese Dictionary (ISBN 0-8048-1912-2).

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      CONTENTS

       Introduction

       Guide to symbols

       Pronunciation

       Grammar

       Kanji & Kana

       Numbers

      PART I

       Japanese–English

      PART II

       English–Japanese

      INTRODUCTION

      This is a dictionary based on spoken Japanese, in two parts: Japanese– English and English–Japanese. It aims to be of immediate use to the beginning student of Japanese who wants to know the meaning of an expression he has just heard or who seeks to express himself in ordinary, everyday situations. This is the place to look for the words to help you get a plumber, staples for your stapler, or sushi without the horseradish. It will also help you when you are groping for the appropriate form of a Japanese verb; here, too, you will find just which different verbs may converge in a given form, such as itte [行って, 要って, 言って], which can mean “going,” “needing,” or “saying.” This dictionary cannot take the place of a textbook or a reference grammar, but it can remind you of the important points made by those books.

      If you are primarily interested in reading and writing Japanese, you will need other tools, but certain features of this work will be useful to you in unexpected ways. Japanese sentences can be written using only kana—all hiragana or all katakana or a mixture of the two. However, the result is often hard to read because the Japanese do not traditionally use any device to separate words, such as the spaces we use in English. Japanese sentences written in romanized form (in any system) are easier to read because the spaces make the words stand out individually. Also, judiciously placed hyphens make the structure of compound words more accessible to the eye.

      The Japanese normally write their sentences in a mixed script by using kanji (Chinese characters) for the more salient words, especially nouns, and hiragana as a kind of neutral background, appropriate for grammatical endings, particles, and the like. They also use kana as a kind of fallback, when they are uncertain or ignorant of the appropriate kanji. By using katakana for modern foreign words and other oddities, and also kanji for the words made up of elements borrowed many years ago from China, a writer can make words stand out from the background in a way that partly makes up for the absence of spaces between them.

      Unfortunately, the use of kanji tempts the writer into relying entirely on the eye, forgetting that texts might be read over the telephone or listened to in the dark. For this reason, words confusing to the ear should be avoided. As a result, written Japanese today is an artificial and unstandardized medium of communication, varying in complexity with each writer and every text. If you ask ten Japanese