Customer Reviews

Let's Learn Kanji: An Introduction to Radicals, Components and 250 Very Basic Kanji (Kodansha's Children's Classics)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a good book for beginning students of Japanese. This book walks you through the basics of kanji: stroke order, style, radicals, readings, and compounds. It starts out a little slow because it teaches you all the basic radicals before moving to real kanji. However, I feel that learning the radicals first is a good thing and the book is right in doing so, but nevertheless for the impatient student this book may seem slow. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has just started to learn kanji.

...but this book is working for me!
A little background so you understand why I rate this book 5 stars:
I have a decent handle on Japanese grammar and aural comprehension, making steady progress every week. The remaining challenge was progressing in Kanji. However, every source I checked indicated that the rote memorization of Kanji was unavoidable. I tried some of the mnemonic techniques but that approach seemed to add more work, with marginal results. You can follow the stroke order etc, but the details start to blur after a while if it seems like you are just drawing random pictures. Alas, learning Kanji seemed like it was going to be a long hard slog.

Fortunately, I'm really good at take low level details and using induction to put the details into a larger context. Lo and behold along comes Let's Learn Kanji! The genius of this book(I've searched for others that are similar in approach but no luck there) is that it teaches about the fundamental Kanji radicals and how they can aggregate and combine into more complicated Kanji. Since I learned the Kana fairly quickly, this felt like learning new Kana(even though it isn't) because the shapes were not as complicated from jump and I could get comfortable with how they were actually contstucted with correct stroke order and stroke type. Now, when I read my grammar books, with the kanzi, okurigana and romazi translations, I can see the radicals present within the Kanji. The Kanji then start making sense, given that the radicals have already been described. The correlation with the radicals isn't 100% but there is enough for me to make consistent progress without feeling overwelmed. Discovering this book was energizing. Be forewarned, that it will still take time to go through all of the material. However, in a relative sense, I think of it as short term (mild) pain, for long term gain. This approach is not for everyone. But for those who like to understand low level details(radicals) so they can fit it into a larger picture(Kanji). I highly recommend it.

Let's Learn Kanji is systematic, it gives you a wealth of basic kanji knowledge (including stroke order and radicals) as well as providing space to practice AND regular worksheets/mini tests so you can monitor your progress! Often kanji books offer only examples and written explanations, or focus soley on repeated written practice. The addition of the mini tests for consolidating your learning makes this book a must have. I studied some kanji previously but found my self directed study slow. While I agree with the other reviewer that the pace seem stedious at first, I after a month I can claim some serious progress! My only concern with this text is that from time to time the mini tests do not have an answer key. All in all an excellent book for self study by motivated beginners!

This book is clear, systematic, and comprehensive. It includes excellent information about kanji aesthetics and stroke formation/order. I have no doubt that it would lay an excellent foundation for learning kanji IF YOU FINISH IT.
My problem with it is you have to slog through 85 pages of radicals (that is A LOT of work) before you write your 1st real kanji. That doesn't work for me. It provides very little reward in the beginning and I lost motivation. Also, I am living in Japan and didn't want to wait months before beginning on real kanji. I want it now. I'm not in it for the long haul. So I bought Basic Kanji Book instead. It's nothing out of the ordinary, but it got me learning real kanji that I can use right away, and it has kept me at it.

This was the first kanji book I tried to learn with, and I found it very hard to keep up with. One good thing I liked from the start is, there is a lot of information in this book, like, what to call the strokes in Japanese -- i.e. hidari barai, migi barai, kanmari, etc.

The biggest problem for me was that the book wants you to learn all the radicals, strokes and terminology before you learn any actual kanji. I wasn't learning any kanji, and there was no application of what I was learning i.e., reading material, etc. At the time I was living in my hometown, and the only time I saw kanji was when I opened that book, so it was quite discouraging for me at times. It took me at least a week to learn all the information about -- i.e. the afore mentioned terminology -- before I could go on and tackle what it was actually trying to teach. Another problem is that there is a lot of romaji at the beginning, which personally, I thought was deleterious to my Japanese learning as a whole.

That said, the benefits -- i.e. detailed radical information, and Japanese terminology for writing the kanji, shouldn't be overlooked. I used another book to learn kanji, and when I went back to this one, I found it a lot more useful, and not so overwhelming. I highly recommend this book if you already have a good, basic, grasp of kanji, radicals and stroke order. Maybe not a great beginner book, but definitely a good resource when you're comfortable with kanji and want something a little more detailed.

I agree with the previous authors, that it's a very helpful and thorough book that gives you loads of opportunity to see the kanji in context and to practise writing it.
However, this is not a book for beginners, despite the very friendly name! I got demotivated because of the lack of reward of learning radical after radical but having little Japanese to attach it to.
Now that I know 3-400 kanji, I can see the value of the book.

The same author of this book wrote " Let's Learn Hiragana" and " Let's Learn Katakana". So for those of you who bought those books and loved them; then this book is for you. I'm 14 years old and learning japanese and once I had my grammar right and learned hiragana and katakana, I was left with the task of learning Kanji. This book made is really simple and people of all ages can use it ( mostly recommended for middle school age and above). It shows you the strokes, radical origins ( which come in handy) and all the Kun and On readings of the Kanji. Great to use on the Japanese Proficiency Exam Level 4.

I have been writing Japanese for years, and I started with the author's "Let's Learn Hiragana" and "Let's Learn Katakana." I loved both books, especially the Hiragana. I learned Kanji from various sources, spent hundreds of dollars on books (literally), yet none of them were as beautifully written as this one. If you want to learn the characters in depth, and want to really enjoy writing them (yes, it is artistic and even fun to do) and not just be flabbergasted and frustrated, this is the book to start with (or even switch over to). I might get this book just to improve my handwriting!

I've been studying Japanese on-and-off for many years, and as such, amassed more Japanese books that anyone would need. "Let's Learn Kanji" despite its friendly title, is a book that *with dedicated study*, will enable you to obtain a very solid foundation in the building blocks (the radicals and components) that form Kanji. You'll learn that Kanji construction is often quite logical.

It starts out with information on the importation of Kanji from China to Japan, to give you some background on how kanji evolved.

Next you learn the strokes (and their names in Japanese, which lends an authentic flair that books like "Remembering the Kanji" just don't have.)

Next you learn the 92 most common traditional radicals, again, along with their names. They are grouped (so helpful) by where they appear in a kanji (For example, some radicals always appear on the left side of a kanji - these are called "hen" radicals.) Each possible kanji location has a name in Japanese, which I found interesting, and again, this knowledge lends that authentic flair I love about this book. These radicals tend to impart meaning (versus sound) to a kanji.

Next you learn 107 "Useful but non-traditional components" - some have names, some don't. These are as important as the traditional radicals as building blocks, as many indicate how the kanji sounds. Some will seem very complex, with many intricate strokes, but the authors do advise state that beginners can save the very high-stroke-order kanji for later in their studies. The choice is yours. Personally, I'm going to study them.

With each radical and component, the authors have provided two or three example kanji that incorporate the radical or component being studied.

(One thing I read somewhere: The radicals and components can be thought of as Lego Bricks that you fit together to create simple kanji, followed by more complex Kanji constructions!)

Throughout the stroke, radical, and component chapters, the authors use romaji. Which is annoying, but all is forgiven in Part 2, where you learn the 250 Very Basic Kanji. The authors present the kanji by stroke order.

Each Kanji entry has a lot of information
* The readings (IN KANA! WOOT!)
* Its basic English meaning
* one to three examples of a single "more complex" kanji incorporating the basic kanji
* Short phrases incorporating the kanji, grouped by on and kun reading.

After each group of kanji, you get a plethora of exercises including many sentences to see the kanji in context. (For this reason, I would recommend that you knew some basic Japanese grammar before tackling this section of the book. You should also know hiragana and katakana well.)

The book itself is a very high quality paperback, complete with dust jacket. The paper is very thick (and forgiving if you make a mistake and need to erase! :) )

Highly recommended - but we need to get Kodansha to REPRINT "LET'S LEARN MORE KANJI"!!!!!

Thanks for reading, and I hope this review was helpful!

I really do love this book and it helped so much, but now that I'm a full time student and working again I just haven't had the time for it. :(