Customer Reviews

Japanese (Berlitz Essentials)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've just finished to go through the book. As an "advanced" beginner in Japanese, I had been trying to find a book that explains clearly the most important points of the grammar that are useful in everyday conversation, and "Essential Japanese" does a very good job of it.

It is divided into twenty units: most of them have a dialog, grammar explanations, an exhaustive vocabulary list and exercises, with a few of them used as revision units. The lessons are quite different from what I've been used to so far, in the sense that they are really focusing on what a beginner would need in real life, both in terms of grammar and vocabulary. The grammar is also explained in a very understandable way, even for people who have no previous knowledge of Japanese, or for those who are not familiar with learning foreign languages, something that is FAR from being the case in most of the other Japanese study guides out there.

Also, and maybe most importantly, it is very well conceived, so you actually get to LEARN the language, and you remember the various structures and the vocabulary presented in there fairly easily. However, it is not a "learn to speak Japanese in 5 hours" kind of book; it requires of you that you actually spend some time on it, but it is much more efficient in my opinion, and the results are quickly there, encouraging you to keep working on it.

All this praise but "only" 4 stars? Well, there's a couple of points that I personally did dislike:

-the book is written entirely in romanji; I understand why they would choose to do so, as it allows to focus on grammar and vocabulary, but since I've been used to work with kana and kanji, it did bother me some. Moreover, you have to know that in Japan, except in such things as advertisement and some magazines' covers, nothing is written in romanji. If you know you're gonna need to read some Japanese too, I suggest you buy at least one of those books out there to learn the kana on top of this one, and a list of essential kanji.

-I didn't find the revision units very useful. Except for a few more exercises, they only repeat the dialogs of the previews lessons word for word. Barely useful in my opinion.

But that shouldn't stop you from buying this book if you're a beginner, or even if you have already some knowledge. This book is, except for the romanji problem, one of the best of its genre I've ever come across, and for a very reasonable price too!

A few months ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to speak Japanese. I'm also 14. After reading this book lightly, off and on for the past month or two, I can speak Japanese. Nothing fancy, but I understand some of my Animes, I can watch the Fujisankei news and understand it some, and I can speak to the sushi chefs on my weekly sushi dinner. This book will teach you to speak it, period. It's lessons are simple, clear, and apply to real life situations. Great job Berlitz!

I have been studying Japanese on my own in the U. S. for closeto a year. I have no particular talent for languages, and my progresshas been slow. I have used some Transparent Language software... a phrase book, and a book on hiragana. However, the most important part of my self-designed curriculum is Stugnell's Essential Japanese. It is a fairly traditional text, providing a highly structured treatment of pronunciation, grammar, and idiomatic expressions. It takes one element at a time, provides examples and explanation, and then practice exercises. I am only about half way through the book, but I think I'll make it to the end and will then be able to get a good deal more out of the software programs, which really just offer practice, not instruction. As language textbooks go, this is about as good as I've seen. Buy this book and ganbatte!

okay, i didn't get this book yet, but i was told, by amazon.com that i will get it on the 15th. later, they emailed me saying that i will get it sometime between 20th-24th! today i checked it again, and it said that i'm supposed to get it on the 21-27th! geez i wanted to learn japanese over the summer, not like, when school starts! bad service!