Page:Lange-Noss - A text-book of colloquial Japanese.djvu/20

 subject is a despised person or one's humble self, the other being reserved for use when the subject is a person for whom one wishes to show respect or when it is necessary to guard one's own dignity in dealing with an inferior. It is not easy even for a native to observe the proper distinctions without being either rude or excessively polite. The Japanese are extraordinarily polite to foreigners, and foreigners are expected to speak a little more politely than a native would under the same circumstances.

No progress is possible without the perpetration of ridiculous mistakes, and the time when one is still obviously "green" is the most opportune time for mistakes. The people are naturally generous and indulgent to newcomers. So the beginner is advised, whatever may have been his previous habit, to make it a rule to chatter about any and everything under the sun to anybody that will listen. As soon as he comes to feel sensitive about mistakes progress will be very difficult.

Helps For Further Study

The student who has mastered this text-book should be familiar with the grammatical structure of the colloquial and be well acquainted with about five thousand words. It is not practicable, even if it were desirable, to include more in a book of this character. In the selection the aim has been to gather a fully representative vocabulary of words that are in common use. Of the common terms, for every one that has been taken one or two have been left. The terminology of one's special business or profession will be learned almost without effort. But if one aspires to be able to converse freely on any subject of common interest, at least double the number of words contained here will be needed. A vocabulary grows only by practice, but practice is dependent on observation, and to prepare one's self for exact observation printed books are indispensable. It is a common experience that an entirely strange word just learned from a book may be heard several times within a few hours afterwards.

Colloquial literature consists mostly of stories and speeches of various kinds. There are a few collections of extracts in rómaji, of which the best are : Lloyd, Colloquial Texts ; Plaut, Japanisches Lesebuch, Berlin, 1891 ; Benkyóka no Tomo, Hongkong, 1892, the little monthly periodical Yachigusa published in Tokyo, 1898-9, and the similar publication Rómaji begun in 1905.