Customer Reviews

Japanese the Easy Way (Barron's E-Z)

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

 

 

Of the three Japanese books I have (one is about hiragana and the other is a katakana book, and the third is a kanji book), this one is by far the best. Instead of forcing you to memorize all characters and the syllables first, it uses real life examples, pronunciation rules, and public signs written in both hiragana (japanese) and kanji (chinese characters) to enrich the learning experience. The book also contains vital culture information regarding politeness and polite formal statements and words, bowing, rudeness, and how to act in public. As the author stated in the first few pages Japanese is a language which is approached on its own terms and that is exactly what she does throughout. A definite must for any person considering learning/studying Japanese or considering visiting Japan.

In 1998 in a high school exchange to Japan, this book was thrust into my hands by a teacher. The school had no formal Japanese language education course, so this was the best they could do. I studied it eagerly cover to cover and my copy is full of pencilled in notes, "kanji" doodles etc... It was indeed the perfect start to learning the language of Japanese. Today I am fluent speaker of the language, pursuing an education and a career here.

The book must be thought of as a starting point. It isn't going to make you fluent over night, nor will it teach you the chinese characters you'll need to learn. But it will draw you in and show you the basics. The dialogues can be applied to everyday life, and the book moves at an appropriate pace. All that is required is the usual effort needed to learn a language, and this book will lead you in the right direction. If you've got even more time, you may want to complement the book with kanji and kana workbooks to work on your reading and writing ability.

This book,in my opinion, is really good to have if you know some japanese to guide you.They explain it really well and have conversational practices and answers in here. they include alot of vocabulary, and some kanji for it, but not alot. This book is really detailed to make you understand Japanese the easy way. You won't be able to put it down!

I bought about 3 books about Japanese and 2 computer programs, and let me tell you, this one was definately the best I ever bought. It has vocabulary in every chapter, simple to intermediate sentence structures, & 9 out of every 10 words learned are shown in Kanji/Kana forms. Animé fans who want to learn: get this!

It was very easy to learn the basic sentence structures with this book. The author makes it somewhat simple to learn vocabulary by integrating it with the grammar in the exercizes. The exercizes are a great way to test your brain on what you've just learned.

I only had two problems with this book.

1.) They use a lot of romaji within the book which is confusing not only because romaji is much harder to use for the pronunciation of Japanese words, but also because they switch between using an accented letter and just doubling the letter to indicate a stress. They do, however, use kana as well but I was tempted to read the romaji just because it was there and in my native characters.

2.) It would be better if they had more exercizes to help with memorizing the vocabulary. Few vocabulary words were selected with the exercizes and the rest you just have to test yourself to try and memorize them.

Overall this is a great book! I definitely recommend it.

I bought this book on an impulse, and I still haven't made up my mind on it. The lessons are nice and there is plenty of dialogue, yet the majority is romaji. Some of the vocab lists are all romaji and all the dialogue is. Other tables use kana and kanji. It is a fine book if you use it as a supplement (as it says) but don't buy it expecting to base your Japanese study around it else you will be disappointed. All in all I felt it was a bit too basic, and my Japanese is really not that good.

this book wasn't very interesting to me.. it was rather dry in my opinion.. i got it because i had luck with their algebra the easy way book.. because i had such high expectations for the book i was extra disappointed when it wasn't as good as the algebra book..

its not awful.. it just didnt meet my expectations

oh and it introduces kana but doesnt use it for most of the pronounciations

its ok as far as texts go