Customer Reviews

Kanji from the Start

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

 

 

After going through the first three lessons diligently I was confused as to why I found this book so hard to learn from. Then I re-read the Foreward and figured out why:

"...It was designed with hypertext in mind - that is, an electronic version which would enbale the reader to access from the screen explanations of characters or of grammar points in the displayed text."

In other words, it was created for a MBA course at Kings College and was meant to be used on computers. However, hypertext obviously doesn't work in the book and no CD is included. This means that the lessons start out with a majorly difficult story in Kanji and then you get explanations later on of what the Kanji mean and how they are formed. I personally learn better from flash cards (or just from reading the subway signs). I have lived in Japan for 3+ years, and I personally would not recommend this book.

The only reason I gave it more than 1 star is because the few Kanji explanations I saw (after struggling through the text) were somewhat informative.

Most textbooks designed for English-speaking students of the Japanese language either give their exercises and readings in Rooma-ji (the western alphabet) or else in hiragana and katakana (the syllabaries used in Japan, each with about 50 characters). If someone is aiming at being able to READ as well as speak Japanese, both strategies are less than ideal, since rooma-ji is normally not used in Japan at all, save for occasional street signs or store names, and hiragana and katakana are used only for those words not normally written in kanji (kanji being the 1800 or so characters imported from China -- each of which often has multiple meanings and/or pronunciations). Kanji, as difficult as they are to master, are a fact of life in Japan, and in my opinion there are only two strategies that make sense in regard to them: 1. Dive in all the way, memorize all the common ones and become literate in Japanese; 2. Totally ignore the damn things and get by on the spoken language and the aid of English speaking Japanese (the route I seem to be on). For students of the first path, this is an EXCELLENT book --the readings are well organized, the kanji are thoroughly explained, and there's plenty of supplemental grammar and so forth, so that even a beginning student, with work, can profit from the text. I wouldn't "start" studying Japanese with this book, though -- you should have some basic familiarity with the language, both as a spoken phenomenon and as a grammatical system, before you dig into this book. If you're there, though, and want to commit to the "kanji adventure," this is an excellent text for you, and will serve you, in the long run, much better than studying in either Rooma-ji or the syllaberies will. By the way, it's designed more for self-study than classroom use, and is nicely formatted -- an attractive book, well worth the money.

This book is very well writen. Writes a story first in Kanji (characters) next in romanji (japanese words in english letters) and then finnally in English. A very practical and effective guide.

This is not an easy book to work through but it is the bridge that I've been looking for. I'm well versed in hiragana, katakana and the meanings of a large amount of Kanji through James Heisg, Remembering the Kanji I.

I've been wanting to jump into reading Kanji for awhile now. With an eye to working through children's books and finally towards novels in Japanese. I've found books that either were very easy (meant for the beginner student) or very hard (no explanation at all on how to read the kanji).

This book, has done exactly what I wanted, a good introduction for the intermediate Japanese student with Chapters that get progressively harder with each story building on the last.

This book contains 12 readings of (more or less) genuine written Japanese. These are presented in full kanji first and then (on the following pages) in dual columns with roomaji in the left and the English translation on the right. I like this format in a reader. The problem is that none of the 12 readings ever exceed about 1.5 pages long. So basically you only get about 20 pages of written Japanese in all the 350+ pages of this reader. What the hell man?

OK, that's not entirely fair. The main selling point of the reader is teaching kanji in context. This is done fairly well. The kanji it presents are grouped logically together and you are given pretty good notes to help you remember them and/or relate them to other kanji, whether it is based on a radical that imparts meaning, a reading, a common theme or a mnemonic to help you remember the kanji.

There's somewhat over 700 kanji presented in this book. Modest, though it seems compared to the list of 1850 jouyou kanji, remember that's 700 kanji in about 20 pages of text, which in fact is incredibly ambitious. To be honest, I like ambitious texts and I especially like parallel texts in readers. The problem with the parellel text, though is that the English translations are always parallel to roomaji renderings of the text--I'm not sure if this would be good for a beginner or not, and I don't see how it's helping an intermediate student either. Since the readings themselves are so short, it's hard for an intermediate student to pick up too much grammar or vocabulary from them, and a beginner would likely find them too hard. The readings being so short also puts restrictions on your application of these kanji. In a long text you might learn a kanji on its first occurrence and then be reminded later when you see it 3 or 4 more times. There's just not much opportunity for application in these texts, given their length.

Along the same lines, the book presents some grammar notes aimed at beginning students who have never studied the language before, but I found these were too often simplified to the point of being misleading. Sometimes they were simply wrong, as in the case of calling the "-ku" form of adjectives an infinitive, "desu" the polite form of "da," and both "ya" and "to" being translated as the same word (in the notes). These notes aren't included with every chapter either, which makes me wonder why some chapters have them at all. This really isn't a teach yourself Japanese book. It's a lean Japanese characters in context book.

I want to say -1 star for the readings being too short and too dense, -1 star for the grammar notes being too unhelpful, and -1 more star for the readings being way too dense. But +1 star just because this book actually has parallel text and so few language books do, and +1 more star for the notes and logical organization of most of the kanji, which helps learning them.

When opening this book at the bookstore, I saw the Kanji characters in tables and it looked easy to understand so I bought this book thinking that this book would help me with beginning the process of learning Japanese. However, when re-opening the book, it found it so incredibly technical and hard to undertstand. The book mentioned "tables 6-7 or table 7" and there is nothing marked - so I could not find out what tables they were talking about. It had a nice way of listing the Japanese 'particles', but the explainations were so technical that I barely understood them. This book is not for a beginners level.

Let's face it, learning to read material written in Japanese is not easy! What "Kanji From the Start" does admirably well is to take a person who knows little about the language and teaches him or her how to read it in about 3 months, I would say. You will learn 600 Kanji along the way. The readings presented are graded from easy to more difficult and several subject areas are covered. There are readings in Japanese family life, politics, economics and history. Also, the grammar is fully explained and the romanization of the text is side by side with the actual translation. The Japanese text stands alone on its own page with small letters directing the learner to grammar notes.

What I would suggest is that you familiarize yourself with the Kana before attempting this book. I used "Let's Learn Hiragana" and "Let's Learn Katakana". Additionally, you should have "A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese" by Sakade, et al. "Kanji From the Start" does not go into how to write. Kanji have a very definite stroke order. Sakade's book shows you how to write the characters. It is very well organized and easy to use. Writing the characters is a definite aid in remembering them. In my opinion that is all you need in order to successfully study and complete "Kanji From the Start" and thereby successfuly read Japanese.

This is not a book to use if you are starting out in Japanese. However it is a wonderful book if you have the basics under your belt and wish to review and go further in the language. I studied Japanese about ten years ago and have been wanting to get back into it. The beginning texts that I own are way to simple at this point and I am too rusty to jump right back into the intermediate text book. Kanji From the Start is perfect for my needs however. Working on the text a little bit at a time brushed up and increased my knowledge of grammer, of Kanji and Kanji compounds.

I should note that while the grammar notes are quite useful it is helpful to have other references on hand to dig deeper into some of the more complex sentences.