Good Grammar Overview for Beginners?

[markystar]

However, I think that Japanese uses these forms more than we do in English. Does anyone else agree?

in latin "volitional" refers to a different grammatical structure than in japanese.

i've never heard of an english volitional form, but if you say an english verb is volitional, it means it's a verb expressing want/desire.

want to, would like to, will, hope to, desire to, wish, etc.

this use is quite different from the japanese volitional.

[Liz21]

However, I think that Japanese uses these forms more than we do in English. Does anyone else agree?

in latin "volitional" refers to a different grammatical structure than in japanese.

i've never heard of an english volitional form, but if you say an english verb is volitional, it means it's a verb expressing want/desire.

want to, would like to, will, hope to, desire to, wish, etc.

this use is quite different from the japanese volitional.

Markystar! Aha! Just as I suspected! Japanese uses some different verb forms that we don't have. So, it's not just that we don't know our English grammar very well (hey, well, maybe we don't, actually, hahaha!)

[johnpa]

if you're looking for entertaining, informative books about the Japanese language, you could try Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese - he's the guy who translates a lot of Haruki Murakami's novels into English, and he recently worked on the Xbox 360 game, Lost Odyssey.)

Thanks. That's exactly what I'm looking for.
Haruki Murakami is probably my biggest motivation for getting into Japanese. His translator must be a very talented person in his own right. I'll have to check that book out.

[Taurus]

It's definitely worth checking out. A lot of it went right over my head, but a lot of it didn't and it's so well written that it's very entertaining and, a bit like japanesepod, the enthusiasm for the language is infectious.