This volume teaches the reader to read and write katakana in a quick, effective way by combining them into words. The Power Japanese series presents a selection of guides to difficult or confusing aspects of the Japanese language. The student can find a quick reference to particles, a guide to the myriad levels of politeness, books of idioms, vocabulary builders, emotive expressions and turns of speech - all with natural examples.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Language Notes
Text: English, Japanese
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Preface [slightly abridged and minus katakana]
As useful as it is to casual learners of the Japanese language, and as necessary to serious students, katakana frequently does not receive the close attention that it deserves. The serious student, studying in school where hiragana and kanji maintain pride of place, is often left with a less than perfect introduction to the katakana syllabary. The casual learner (the tourist, business person, etc.), ignorant of katakana's function as a means of transcribing loanwords from English and other languages, remains unaware of its usefulness in acquiring a knowledge of much practical, everyday written Japanese as encountered, for example, in restaurants and hotels. It is for these two divergent types of reader that the present book was written.
One of the primary functions of katakana is for marking native Japanese words for emphasis, much as italics is used in English. Another related function, as mentioned above, is the transcription of loanwords, such as "cake," "pie," and "hamburger." It is such words as this, of which there are a considerable number, that the casual learner will eventually be able to pick up after going through this book. Once the means of transcription has been learned--that is, katakana--the meanings of the words themselves can often (but not always) be deduced by anyone who knows English or whatever other language the word has been borrowed from. Thus the casual learner, with a little effort, will be able to distinguish the names of many "Western food" restaurants and decipher many of the items on the menu, and in general to read and acquire for speaking purposes many words with practical application. The aim of the present book is thus to teach three things: one, the reading (recognition) of the individual katakana characters; two, the writing of these characters; three, the combination of the characters into actual words. To accomplish the latter end, katakana has been introduced not in the traditional order (which limits the number of words that can be constructed, especially in the primary stage), but in a order that facilitates the building of vocabulary as the student moves from lesson to lesson and adds new characters to his or her repertoire. Exercises are included with each lesson to reinforce and test the reader's mastery of what has been presented to that point.
Following the main text is an appendix of useful vocabulary, categorized for easy reference. Some of these categories concern food, brand names, and barber shops and beauty parlors, areas of particular interest to those making their way through the maze of everyday life in a foreign country. The list of composers, painters, etc., though of less apparent practical use, illustrates the differences between Anglicized and katakana-ized versions of some well-known proper names. The appendix is succeeded by two longish glossaries (katakana-English and English-katakana), which include all the vocabulary items that appear in the book as well as a good deal more. These glossaries will, it is hoped, prove helpful to both casual and serious readers either as practical references or simply as additional vocabulary to be studied at leisure.
Readers who are approaching katakana for the first time will want to proceed from the Preface to the Introduction for further orientation. More experienced students might decide to go straight to the body of the book without loss, for the basic approach employed there is fairly self-explanatory....
[Here is one section from the Introduction.]
Structure of the Book [minus the macrons in the original] In this book, katakana characters are not introduced in traditional order (which is shown in Table 1, p. 18). Rather, they are presented in a new order that facilitates the reading and writing of meaningful words from the very first lesson. Lessons 1-4 present the basic katakana one or two at a time, beginning with a demonstration of how to write the characters. With each katakana presented, there is a list of words using that character as well as the characters already presented; the words are transcribed in Roman alphabet, and English glosses are given. Review exercises are provided at the end of each lesson. Lessons 5-8 cover diacritics and other variations and, like the earlier lessons, include word lists and exercises.
Japanese words have been transcribed in the Roman alphabet (roomaji ) using a modification of the Hepburn romanization system. Although there are other romanization systems, the Hepburn system was chosen for this book since it is used in most Japanese-English dictionaries. The modification concerns the representation of long vowels: instead of using a macron, long vowels are spelled out in full (toosuto).
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More About the Author
Anne Matsumoto Stewart is a professional Japanese-language instructor with more than 25 years of experience. She has taught at all levels, from kindergarten through university. After earning an M.A. in linguistics from the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, she went on to pursue graduate studies in Japanese pedagogy at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Cornell University, where she earned another M.A., in Japanese literature. She is the author of All About Katakana, Kodansha's Hiragana Workbook, Kodansha's Katakana Workbook (all from Kodansha International), and the coauthor of several volumes of the Total Japanese series (Bonjinsha/Waseda University). She is a member of the Association of Teachers of Japanese and the National Council of Japanese Language Teachers, and currently teaches and resides in Seattle.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book for those who memorize well,
By WhatZat@aol.com (Arizona) - See all my reviews
This review is from: All about Katakana (Power Japanese Series) (Paperback)
This is a great book for those who can memorize quickly and without much trouble. It merely presents the katakana characters in an order that promotes construction of vocabulary, giving the reader a sense of accomplishment at learning new words. This is great for those who are good at other languages or memorize easily, but I would imagine that if mere repetition of writing the symbol does not drill it into your head, you would have a tough time with this one. It provides no space to write in the book, I suggest getting graph paper and writing the characters/vocab. down as you learn them, it really helped me memorize.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent companion book for those studying Japanese!,
By Aikidoka (Manhattan, KS) - See all my reviews
This review is from: All about Katakana (Power Japanese Series) (Paperback)
"All About Katakana" is an easy-to-understand book that presents the katakana alphabet and the formation of katakana words in a straightforward and helpful manner. Being a college student working towards a minor in Japanese, this book was recommended by my Japanese instructor and I use it frequently for assignments, reference, and study. An essential book for those striving to understand the Japanese language!
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It works,
By "trag252" (North Little rock, AR USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: All about Katakana (Power Japanese Series) (Paperback)
I learned Hiragana first and even a ton of Kanji, but I just couldn't seem to learn Katakana. This book did the trick for me because it is laid out in a stuctured manner, you learn to write ƒgƒ}ƒg (tomato) and then suddenly to and ma are in long term memory. A trick I learned for the similar kana (tsu, shi, so and n) was to draw a line through the center of the dots, this will help you start to see the pattern. Get this book!
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