A beginners' Japanese-language textbook produced by the Japan Foundation for learners studying the language outside Japan, printed in Sri Lanka by Vijitha Yapa Publications. The title translates roughly as "Japanese basics".
One point to settle before ordering: the book is written in Japanese. It is a teaching text in the target language rather than an English-medium grammar, and it assumes the support of a classroom and a teacher. Buyers looking for a self-study guide explained in English should know that this is not that kind of book.
Its place in Sri Lankan language teaching is a settled one. The Colombo Language Centre at the University of Colombo prescribes the Japan Foundation's Nihongo Shoho as the set text for its short course in basic Japanese, and notes that the book has been printed locally by Vijitha Yapa since the middle of the last decade. That course works through the hiragana and katakana scripts along with an initial group of kanji, basic sentence structure, self-introduction, counting, verb forms and adjectives — the ground a complete beginner covers before anything else.
So the likely buyer is someone already enrolled on a course that has named this text, or a teacher assembling materials for one. It will also suit a learner who has a tutor and wants the book that Sri Lankan classrooms actually use, rather than one of the many international alternatives. Anyone who has studied Japanese at a language centre in Colombo will recognise it.
The Japan Foundation is the Japanese government's body for cultural and language exchange abroad, and its teaching materials are written for learners encountering the language in their own countries rather than in Japan. Vijitha Yapa Publications is an established Colombo publisher issuing titles in Sinhala and English, and here acts as the local printer of a foreign-authored text — which is why a Japanese-language textbook carries a Sri Lankan ISBN.
- Author: Japan Foundation (copyright)
- Publisher: Vijitha Yapa Publications
- Language: Japanese
- Pages: 418
- ISBN: 9789551266011
Browse the rest of our book collection.
