A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar [aDoJG] 💮 Reading Club // Reading the Intermediate version

Thanks, can see part of the title on mobile too now :slight_smile:

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Hey everyone! I’ve been working on something in my spare time (instead of actually doing my reading :sweat_smile:). I often like to look up grammar in multiple dictionaries to get a different viewpoint, so I wanted an easy way to cross-reference between dictionaries. That is, given an entry in DOJG I can easily see what pages that same topic is covered in other places.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

To use, go to the sheet for “DOJG” (or another grammar dictionary), find the row with the entry you want, then look at the right few columns to see the pages it appears in other dictionaries.

The dictionaries covered so far:

  • Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar - I plan on expanding to more than just “basic” in the near future. It shouldn’t be a lot of work, but I haven’t done it yet because there are some weird exceptions in how the entries are formatted.
  • A handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns - I often find this easier to read than DOJG. More modern and uses furigana.
  • A Dictionary of Japanese Particles - Handy reference but only covers common particles.

Questions and comments are welcome. Please let me know if there are any mistakes. I can also add more dictionaries if there is a good way to get the index data for it (so far I just added the ones that I’ve found useful and own a physical copy of).

You can see the code for info on the data sources and to get a copy of the data in CSV form.

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Uhmm… those links to read the dictionaries for free on the opening page, they don’t look particularly legal to me (maybe the Internet Archive one, but I can’t remember how the lawsuits against them have gone of the top of my head). If they aren’t legal, it makes linking to your resource iffy here since the rules of this forum forbids linking to pirate sites and such.

Also, perhaps on a more personal note: while copying a few explanations from the dictionary is fine. Taking all the explanations to all the grammar points in the book like this, it makes me uneasy. It doesn’t include the more unique parts of the dictionary (aka the example sentences and the notes), but it is still a big part of the book copied without permission although the parts that probably aren’t fully covered by copyright in the US (note that I do not know copyright law in Japan, for example). But this is more a FYI (I think).

Anyway, if you can let me know that the links for the free reads are legal or take them off if illegal/gray, I’d be happy to link to the spreadsheet in the OP under additional resources.

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Yeah, good point… About the links to the online copies, I doubt the geocities site is legal. No idea about the Internet Archive one. Pretty sure it’s gray-area enough for me to be comfortable with it, but it’s really up to the forum rules, so I’ll go ahead and remove them.

About including the DOJG explanations, it was so easy to add after all the other data I gathered, I just included them without thinking much. My intention was to make something that was useful but couldn’t be a replacement for actually buying the books (or in fact, could lead to more people buying it), but I’m not sure if I succeeded in that or not. I could go either way on this: one on hand, looking back maybe the explanations are a larger part of the book than I thought. On the other hand, it’s really useful to have all that info in one place, and I doubt it would prevent anyone from buying the book.

How about I drop the “Usage” column but keep the “English” column? (Edit: I went ahead and did this, seems like the right thing to do) I’m not entirely sure about copyright, but I think it’s a lot more clear morally that it doesn’t do any harm.

Anyways, thanks for raising these concerns.

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Thank you for taking my comments so well. :pray:

And I totally understand wanting to make as useful a thing as possible and that it can be hard to decide how much is too much.

I think this spreadsheet(s) can be super useful for those owning two or more of the books you feature in it. I kinda wish I did already, but I’ve put myself on a temporary book buying ban (I really need to reduce my collection of unread books before I add more :joy:).

It’s added to the OP, and I will make sure it is a part of the weekly threads as well. :smiley:

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This week we start with main entries!

For our first main entries week, we are reading all the A entries: あげる1 to あとで.

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Oh I love this idea! I started out my JP journey by reading a grammar book front to cover! Albeit a much smaller one, and nothing sticked! :rofl: (cause it was too early)

What did stick though was the people noticing me reading between class decided “look they are as crazy as us, lets adopt them”, and 10 years later are still my best friends :grin:

I already own these books, and suck at looking things up (as in, too lazy to do it) so they never get any use. I should dust them of and join! I have been working on my grammar lately through Bunpro and Marumori (as well as Japanese through Zero in the past) so I am way more ready for it now.

I also have these. Maybe they would be great to do alongside or after :slight_smile:
They use a red sheat to hide furigana so you get to practice reading

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I found this club by looking through the active ones and see if anyone was reading something I own already. Must say, did not expect it to be this one :rofl:

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And another week is here, ば to だろう, here is a link to the start point of this week:

We’re still in A-D.


@Abstormal Join us in our insanity! I’m actually enjoying it more than I expected so far. The pace is slow enough that it gives time for reflecting on points and potentially seeing them while reading if someone is doing that regularly.

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I’m trying to catch up. Gotten to week 3 :grin:

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:tada: :dancer:

(Cheering for you if that wasn’t clear. :joy:)

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Very random question - is there anyone in Australia who is after a hard copy of this book? Especially if you live on the east coast!

I’ve seen a copy on a local op shop which is available for $1. I already have a copy but would be happy to buy it and ship it for someone. I’m also shortly driving from Sydney to cairns then Alice springs so have a reasonable opportunity to drop it off…

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Week 6 is here, 〜出す to どう:

I’m linking to the post I made for the official start of the week, but there might be posts earlier than that covering this week’s points. There is a post with links to all the relevant Bunpro entries, which I’ve linked in the top post of the thread. In fact resource collecting posts will always be linked in the OP of each thread (as long as I remember to put them there!).

Last week in A-D thread. Next week we’ll be in E-J. I can’t believe April is already over and we’re on week three of main entries. Time seems to have flown so fast!

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:sob:

I wanted to try doing this with the group, but I haven’t even started the main entries yet. Why am I so bad at doing anything related to grammar?

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I’m behind too. I reckon it just needs a few good days to catch up. (I’m ignoring the early sections that I’m way behind on.)

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I have one section left before the main entries, but I might skip it.

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If you read just two or three of the entries every day, you will catch up in no time!

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If I could regularly read 2-3 grammar points per day I would have already completed all the Shin Kanzen Master grammar books. (I still haven’t even touched the N3 one for review, much to my grammar buddy’s frustration. :sweat_smile:)

I was hoping the book club would keep me honest, but clearly that hasn’t worked so far. I appreciate the encouragement though. Maybe I’ll finally get started tonight. (After all, leaving those threads unread this long has been torture!)

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Boom! First week’s worth done!

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This is such a mood, I have read like 2 main entries total and now I’m so behind :sob:

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