The book walks you through your language in 23 easy steps. Almost automatically you will acquire a large working vocabulary that will suit your needs. As you work through the steps, use the sticky labels (included). At the back of the book, you will also find cut-out flash cards to make learning fun. When you have completed the book, cut out the menu at the back and take it along on your trip. Available in 11 languages.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Language Notes
Text: Japanese
About the Author
Kristine K Kershul
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is the best first step ...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day (Paperback)
Wanting to learn japanese I gathered up about ten books, programs and tape studies. After breezing through each I discovered this book was the best first step. Japanese is a very different language from the European languages, so it takes a lot of effort to really come to grips with the sentance structure (which is nearly backwards from English) and pronounciations (more vowels then English). By knuckling down and trying about 30 minutes a day of hardcore memorization i was able to power through a good deal of the book and gather a decent beginner vocab. Fun enough, the title is 'Japanese in 10 minutes a day' but it doesn't apply to anything in the book...there are no 10 minute regiments. You will just have to work through at your pace. The dialogue and vocab is laid out very well so you start with words that can identify things, and things to identify (colors, objects, destinations, food, buildings, etc). Then it branches out into verbs and adjectives. It has a very simple layout that makes the language as easy as possible for beginners. When done you should have about 1000 words under your command and a basic, usable understanding of Japanese sentace structure. The heavier technique of Japanese Language doesn't come through the book- verb conjugation and explainations of the particle words that are so tricky. But this book ramps you up to begin studies in other books and programs that aren't as well laid out, or simple to follow.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Inovative ideas, good book, but won't teach you to speak,
This review is from: Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day (Paperback)
This book is neat, it has many pictures, and ideas for learning things, like stickers you can put all over your house that label things in japanese, and a number of other exercies (crossword puzzes, short quizzes, etc) that force you to use as you learn. For this it is quite a good book.I don't give it 5 stars because it seriously lacks in teaching actual comprehension. You'll learn a lot of words in this book, but don't expect to learn how to speak or understand natural sentances. There is very little mention of sentance structure or particles.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day,
This review is from: Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day (Paperback)
This is the first Japanese-language book I had ever gotten; the same year as it's first printing, 1998. At this time, I couldn't find nearly as many resources as there are now for Japanese, so this was all I had! It was at the height of my interest in anime and video games that I really wanted to learn Japanese. This book, though it provided the foundation for my continuing interest in Japanese, entirely left out many important points. It wasn't until my later, more serious study of Japanese that I realized what was wrong with this book.
But, first of all, the good points. For one, it has a sensible layout. It starts with pronunciation and from there moves on to key question words, naming locations of objects, rooms of a house, and so on. Every lesson is short enough to not be overwhelmed by (taking about 10 minutes or so to complete and ponder over), and yet provides you with a lot of useful words and phrases. Each lesson builds off of the previous one, so you probably won't forget what you were supposed to have learned before, since it keeps reminding you of certain important phrases (especially the question words). There are many exercises asking you to write each word a few times so you retain it as well as exercises that ask you to answer questions or recall previously learned information. One of the better features of this book is that it comes with over 150 "sticky labels" that you can attach onto objects around your house. These labels will help you to associate the Japanese word with the concept involved (kagami = mirror, for example). There are also flash cards to cut out, a "PocketPal" guide with essential travel phrases, and a cut out "Menu" section listing Japanese words for common foods and drinks. Now for the bad points. It's first mistake is in referring to the sound system of Japanese as an "alphabet". It isn't an alphabet, it's a syllabary. Syllabaries are based around sounds, not letters. English is written in the Roman alphabet, which contains letters (a, b, c, d, and so on). Japanese is written in hiragana and katakana, which contains sounds (the sounds a, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, and so on). The book does self-admit using romaji to represent Japanese; romaji is the use of the Roman alphabet to represent Japanese words. For example, everytime you type Japanese words like "sushi" you are already using romaji. I don't really have so much of a problem with their use of romaji, which is typical for this type of beginner's text. I just find it odd that they don't mention anything about Japanese being syllable-based instead of letter-based, because this is very important. They mention nothing about the writing system, except that "Japanese is written in pictograms"! All of their pronunciation information is correct, however. Another big problem is that particle words are not explained. The book mentions that: "Japanese has many particle words...Often particle words cannot be translated into English. When these particle words have no English equivalents, they will simply be marked (P)." Though this simplifies the matter of learning basic Japanese, which is what this book was designed for, I really wondered about what these mysterious "particle words" were at the time I first was using this book. It seems that Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day could've at least mentioned that "wa" is a particle word introducing the topic of the sentence, "e" indicates direction, and so forth. They are just short little components of sentences, but they are essential to understanding how Japanese grammar works. I later found that almost all of the "10 minutes a Day" series is structured in the same fashion as the Japanese one, with little consideration for the nuances of each language. With this in consideration, it isn't surprising that the particle words weren't explained better. I remember a lot of the vocabulary and sentences from using this particular book, but I really didn't "get" Japanese after using it. It is a book designed for someone that really doesn't know very much about Japanese and doesn't really desire to know more than the essential words and phrases, approach it in a "fun" manner, and perhaps it may be helpful for a tourist needing to know some degree of Japanese to get by. While this would be an ideal book to get for a young person with an interest in Japanese (it is rather easy to get into and isn't complicated), it's definitely not for someone who is serious about Japanese.
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