Customer Reviews

Let's Learn Katakana: Second Book of Basic Japanese Writing

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book along with its companion Let's learn Hiragana(which must be previously studied before moving into this one) is surely a great step to mastering Japanese writing and reading. Within a month I could read and write perfectly. At first I thought I would not make it, but Yasuko paved me the way. Now I'm buying Let's learn Kanji and Let's learn more Kanji both from the same series. The book is not a 5-star because it is sold as being a book for self students but it doesn't have all the answers on the answer key. For [$$$] you get both Japanese writings quick and painlessly.

I spent a couple of days working through the basic (46) characters in this book before a recent holiday in Tokyo. By the time I arrived I could read the beer ads on the train. Using the later chapters to understand how to write words, combined with the constant exposure of reading as much as I could every day on the train, I left being able to read and write pretty much any Katakana that I'd need to; including the tricker Y[oo]on used to write foreign sounds.

My only gripe would be the authour does assume you've read the companion book Let's Learn Hiragana in a few places. Its not really a bar to understanding, but it means a few terms here and there aren't defined.

This book is really extensive and takes you through all of Katakana and how it is used within Japanese society.

The book first introduces in Chapter One all the characters and characters and related practice exercises in three sections for a total of 46 characters. In Chapter Two, more advanced lessons are covered on the rules for forming Japanese words with Katakana. Example would be that the second 'o' is changed into a 'u' for Japanese words, and is changed to a dash '-' for foreign words. In Chapter Three, there are lessons on how Katakana is used for Japanese words under certain circumstances. In Chapter Four, rules are thoroughly discussed for writing foreign words in Japanese. Finally in Chapter Five, review exercises are offered including a word puzzle. Appendixes are offered showing the answers to the exercises and the origins of Katakana borrowed from Chinese Kanji.

Overall, I find this to be the best source to either thoroughly learn Katakana, or to learn the basics of Katakana. I highly recommend this book and I am using this book to help tutor me through Katakana for my Japanese 1 course that I'm attending.

Forget "Jimi's Book of Japanese: A Motivating Method to Learn Japanese" and that "Kana Pict-o-Graphix : Mnemonics for Japanese Hiragana and Katakana",
both suck (especially compared to this). They are a waste of money unless you are unable to learn anything and need the tiny pict-o-graph book to remind you ever time you read. (it's tiny and does not explain anything properly).

Just get this, his hiragana and kanji books, and "Kanji ABC: A Systematic Approach to Japanese Characters"
and writing is well covered (short of indepth college junk).
his book isn't perfect but common sense should adequatly cover any of his short comings, but i could see how it could confuse someone especially children.

One thing i really liked was his hand writing-ish style of making the characters which made it feel less... unrealistic to more of an everyday thing. (reading some of his examples feels like a letter not some windows controlled text adventure where everything looks exactly the same.)

The worst things about this book = The use of romanji.
if you want to really get into japanese stay away from romanji. romanji will just mess with things badly.

Anyway this book and his series is great, and is worth the money.

Although I'm following the Japanese for Busy people approach to learning Japanese, the Let's Learn Hiragana and Katakana books are very good.
Both books break down the Kana into groups. Stroke (or brush) order and direction are detailed, which if you want to be accurate with your written work, this is a must! Additional information about the Kana, how it is used and combined are all explained in simple to understand English.
The books are designed for self-learning (no teacher), and I believe they are simple enough to do this.

This is the second book in a series of 3. It's laid out in a similar fashion as Let's Learn Hiragana, and it assumes you've completed the book. Let's Learn Katakana starts you out with a brief explanation on what katakana is and why you'd be interested in learning it. Then it sets you off showing you how to write characters (lessons are in chunks of 15, 15 and 16 characters) and includes stroke-order. Once you learn a chunk of characters, they have you writing words using what you learned, before moving onto the next section. This brings me to one of my 2 complaints about this book:

1) Since you're supposed to know hiragana before you learn katakana (according to most methods of learning Japanese,) this book takes very little time to show you how "ga" would be derived from "ka" and so on.

2) I've noticed that the book will drill you on words that use characters that you may not have encountered in your studies. For example, they want you to write "hechima" in katakana before you learn how to write "ma."

While worth mentioning, I feel the complaints are rather small, and one can work around them with very little effort. Over all, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone trying to learn how to write in Japanese!

This is still the best book to learn Katakana, having gone through some modern attempts.

First of all, this is the 2nd book in a 2 part series. The book clearly states this but some reviews seem to have missed it.

I wont go into detail, other people already have, but basically it tells you everything about katakana you want to know, need to know and should know.

The BEST part of this book is that it uses REAL katakana words, not just random japanese words writing in katakana. Sorry if you dont understand what i mean, but believe me this is important and you will not find another author that has gone to this much effort.

Want to learn japanese?
-Get the 1st book, Lets learn Hiragana - it will take 1-2 weeks to master.
-Start learning basic grammar / phrases (you will need a textbook or classes for this, note learning Kana at a school is a BIG waste of money, do it your self at home)
-Get the 2nd book, Lets learn Katakan - will take probably a week to learn, much easier once uve done hiragana but there are some new things added to the pot.
-Start the journey of learning kanji, begin with numbers, 0-9, 10, 100, 1000 etc... days of the week, months, etc.
-Continue with classes to learn more basic grammar and vocab (which will involve more kanji) to complete "beginner" type courses.

BTW thats about 100hrs study right there, 6-12 months depending on time available, as little as 2hrs a week to do it in 1 year. With some kanji cramming you'll be ready for JLPT 4 (2010 = 5)

This book is really extensive and takes you through all of Katakana and how it is used within Japanese society.

The book first introduces in Chapter One all the characters and characters and related practice exercises in three sections for a total of 46 characters. In Chapter Two, more advanced lessons are covered on the rules for forming Japanese words with Katakana. Example would be that the second 'o' is changed into a 'u' for Japanese words, and is changed to a dash '-' for foreign words. In Chapter Three, there are lessons on how Katakana is used for Japanese words under certain circumstances. In Chapter Four, rules are thoroughly discussed for writing foreign words in Japanese. Finally in Chapter Five, review exercises are offered including a word puzzle. Appendixes are offered showing the answers to the exercises and the origins of Katakana borrowed from Chinese Kanji.

Overall, I find this to be the best source to either thoroughly learn Katakana, or to learn the basics of Katakana. I highly recommend this book and I am using this book to help tutor me through Katakana for my Japanese 1 course that I'm attending.

While this is the companion book to Let's Learn Hiragana and suggested as a second, it can be read on its own. It has step-by-step instructions on stroke order.

Exercises include:
Filling in the kana, writing the romaji word in katakana, writing the katakana word in romaji. It also has other games/exercises that are fun and useful in helping you remember the katakana.

I recommend in addition, making your own flash cards with the character on front and a picture, word(s), and the romaji translation on back for easy memorization and recall. Or you can buy flash cards.
However you don't NEED flash cards, as this book is very comprehensive and gives you plenty of opportunity to read, write, remember, and speak words written in Katakana.

- This has the 46 basic Katakana, the 33 yoon, the 18 dakuon, 5 handakuon, just as the Hiragana book does, but it also includes 25 additional syllables that hiragana does not, meant for foreign words.
It introduces you to new words, but there are also some of the same English or Japanese words as the Hiragana book, but obviously you write them differently using the Katakana system.

Very helpful. Fun. There's nothing difficult or boring about it. No teacher needed, just this wonderful book for individual study!

Katakana, being something I needed to learn, meant I needed a book capable of teaching it in a way that doesn't become repetitive.This book succeeds in that respect and beyond. Not only is it an efficient way to learn katakana but if you get the hiragana then you can learn them both competently.Buy it if you want to learn it in a worthwhile way.