"This is the best kanji book available today. Designed for beginners with a basic knowledge of Japanese to use in the classroom or for self–study."—Modern Language Journal Everyday tasks like finding a street address or buying a train ticket can be an ordeal in Japan if you don't read kanji–the system of Japanese writing based on Chinese characters. Unfortunately, the kanji characters taught in most textbooks are not always those that you'll encounter in everyday situations. To fill this gap, a group of teachers from the prestigious University of Tokyo have pooled their talents to create 250 Essential Japanese Kanji Characters in two volumes: a practical way to learn the kanji most frequently used in daily life in Japan. Each lesson helps you master a new group of kanji, using an extremely effective approach that focuses on you, the learner, taking an active part. - Introductory Quizzes introduce everyday situations where you encounter kanji. - Vocabulary sections help you understand the readings and meanings of the kanji. - New Character Charts teach you new kanji systematically—for each character you'll learn its meanings, its basic on–kun readings, its stroke order, common compounds, and derivations. - Practice sections help you improve your skills in recognizing and using the kanji. - Advanced Placement Exam Practice Questions for each lesson follow the format of the College Boards Japanese Language and Culture examination. You'll also encounter authentic and practical materials that help you understand how kanji are used in real–life situations. Emails and texts, choosing the best dictionary in a library, understanding the weather report, navigating floors in a Tokyo department store—all are easier when you know kanji. After studying this book together with its companion 250 Essential Japanese Characters, Volume 1 you will have learned 500 of the most important characters in Japanese and thousands of words in which they appear.

Making one's way through the dense jungle of Old Japanese poetry and prose can be a daunting and discouraging task because of the complex writing systems used during the Asuka (550–710 CE) and Nara (710–789 CE) eras. The intricate script is a bewildering mix of Chinese characters employed for their semantic or phonetic value or as hints to other words—or even for word games. For the first time in English, this dictionary lists all 1,215 Chinese characters used as phonograms (ongana) or vernacular characters (kungana) in Old Japanese texts. It brings together a vast amount of data in relation to Chinese phonology: Old Chinese, Later Han Chinese, Middle Chinese, Sino-Japanese (both Go-on and Kan-on), Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, and Chu Nom. The entries contain examples from more than twenty Old Japanese texts showing how each character was used and in what context. Data from excavated wooden tablets, or slips (mokkan), is included as well as a chart of all the graphs and where they appear in the cited material. Students and scholars of Old Japanese writing and language and those more widely interested in the culture and history of pre-Heian Japan now have important linguistic and textual data at their fingertips arranged by character to help them decipher material from the ancient past.

Brimming with hidden histories and tantalizing twists, The Accidental Dictionary tells the extraordinary stories behind ordinary words.

A history of the English language traces its evolution from a Germanic dialect around 500 A.D. to its modern form, noting the influence of such groups and individuals as early Anglo-Saxon tribes, Alfred the Great, and William Shakespeare.

A survey on the history of letters runs a course from the first symbols pressed into clay tablets to the advent of the Internet.

"How on Earth did we fix upon our twenty-six letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins down the strange story of OK, traces our five lost lettersand tackles the tyranny of spelling, among many many other things. His heroes of the alphabet range from Edward Lear to Phyllis Pearsall (the inventor of the A-Z), and from the two scribes of Beowulf to rappers. Each chapter takes on a different subject - whether it's codes, umlauts or the writing of dictionaries. Rosen's enthusiasm for letters positively leaps off the page, whether it's the story of his life told through the typewriters he's owned or a chapter on jokes written in a string of gags and word games. This is the book for anyone who's ever wondered why Hawaiian only has a thirteen-letter alphabet or how exactly to write down the sound of a wild raspberry"--

"How on Earth did we fix upon our twenty-six letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins down the strange story of OK, traces our five lost lettersand tackles the tyranny of spelling, among many many other things. His heroes of the alphabet range from Edward Lear to Phyllis Pearsall (the inventor of the A-Z), and from the two scribes of Beowulf to rappers. Each chapter takes on a different subject - whether it's codes, umlauts or the writing of dictionaries. Rosen's enthusiasm for letters positively leaps off the page, whether it's the story of his life told through the typewriters he's owned or a chapter on jokes written in a string of gags and word games. This is the book for anyone who's ever wondered why Hawaiian only has a thirteen-letter alphabet or how exactly to write down the sound of a wild raspberry"--

The NPR panelist and humorist author of Alphabet Juice presents a second helping of dexterous and lighthearted vocabulary factoids, fripperies and phenomena compiled to raise awareness about the relationship between words and their various definitions. 50,000 first printing.

A major revision of the Fifth Edition of The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, the premier resource about words for people who seek to know more and find fresh perspectives. This new printing, which marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the original American Heritage Dictionary, presents the most up-to-date research about the words in our language in an accessible and elegant design, featuring thousands of revisions, including more than 150 new words and senses. This is the fiftieth anniversary printing of The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. This beloved dictionary has become the premier resource for anyone who wants to know precisely what words mean, where they come from, and how to use them effectively. It is renowned for presenting accurate and comprehensible definitions, etymologies based on the latest research, and authoritative usage guidance from the celebrated American Heritage Usage Panel. The fifth edition of the dictionary, published in 2011, included 10,000 new words and senses, as well as 4,000 new full-color images. This comprehensive update continues the tradition of exhaustive research and thorough review. Thousands of revisions to definitions and etymologies, 150 new words and senses, and new usage advice make this updated printing the most current print dictionary of its size available today. The American Heritage Dictionary combines clear, precise definitions with useful features that make it easier to choose your words and express yourself clearly. Your words really do define you. Make the most of them with the guidance of this respected work of reference.

Linguists from Europe and North America continue the examination of aorists and perfects that began in the previous volume of the series. Their topics include the continuing divergence of the narrative perfect, the present perfect in Peruvian Spanish: an analysis of personal experience narratives among migrant generations in Lima, the Tahitian particle 'Ua: some uses, "the kids are finished school:" a corpus study of geographical distribution, some remarks on have-less perfect constructions in English, and counter-factual present perfects. Annotation