Most Helpful Customer Reviews
45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Its a 4-star winner of its genre, 5-stars is still open, December 31, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Tuttle language library) (Paperback)
A formidable work which I found essential as a beginning student of Japanese. It will last a lifetime as a text, or at least until the first 996 kanji are completely memorised, which WILL be a lifetime for me. The kanji are ordered in grades according to the 6-grade system used in Japanese schools. I found this useful because this relates to the graded system of testing used in the international Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It's not the way Japanese learn kanji but it is a fascinating source-book for those studying Japanese as a second language. Henshall discounts many common explanations of the origin of kanji eg for EAST, whose common explanation of "sun rising behind trees" he debunks as an error of many centuries standing. I did not give the book 5-stars for the following reasons: (1) It lacks stroke order, so I constantly have to cross-check new kanji with my Kanji Dictionary. (2) It uses romanji. I have come to absolutely subscribe to the theory of my first Japanese language teacher who banned romanji from the classroom and loudly lamented the corruption of thought and understanding it imposed on students of Japanese. Why people who have the interest and motivation to study kanji would want to do so in romanji is certainly beyond my understanding. But obviously Henshall and his editors have given this matter weighty thought and decided otherwise. This book fully deserves 5-stars, but the opportunity for a 5-star kanji guide remains open to others.
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36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Big Help Learning Kanji, November 15, 2001
This review is from: A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Tuttle language library) (Paperback)
If you are learning Japanese, you probably already know that one of the most challenging elements is learning Kanji, the ideographic characters that make up a large portion of the written language. This book helps a lot with the Joyo Kanji, the nearly 2000 glyphs that are mandated by the Education Ministry for basic competence. This book presents the characters in the order they are introduced to Japanese school children, so there's no risk of getting a complex, obscure Kanji until you are ready for them. Each character is introduced with its possible pronunciations and meaning, just like most other Kanji dictionaries. The two things that make this book unique are the detailed "etymological" explanations of the formation of each character, and the suggested mnemonic devices for each glyph. The mnemonics are not always useful, and often you can come up with better ones yourself, but the explanation of the formations of the characters is outstanding. By understanding how the character was formed, you learn the various elements that make up all kanji, making them easier to learn as you go along. An additional benefit is that by knowing the origins of the character, you won't be thrown off when you happen upon kanji written using the old style, which depending on where you live and what you do, may be fairly often. The only thing that I found disappointing about this book is that is doesn't give stroke-by-stroke instructions on writing most kanji. Granted, that would make the book a MUCH larger volume, but when faced with a 23-stroke monster, some idea of where to start writing it would be helpful. Of course, if you use a word-processor exclusively, you'll never need to know.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An absolutely essential aid to understanding Japanese Kanji, July 24, 1996
By A Customer
This review is from: A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Tuttle language library) (Paperback)
Anyone attempting to learn the Japanese language quickly realizes that Kanji is the most difficult of the three Japanese alphabets to learn. Each kanji can have anywhere from 1 to 42(or so) strokes involved in writing it, and plain memorization is a Herculean task. Kenneth Henshall, however, has provided the divertable rivers with this book. Each of the 2000 standard Kanji that the Japanese have learned by the time they've finished school is indexed by the year it's learned, and each listing has the KUN and 'on' readings listed--just as in a Kanji Dictionary.. ..the difference is, Kenneth has researched each Kanji's origin as a picture or diagrammed idea, and explained the reason for the changes from that form under each Kanji. He has also included Mnemonic devices after each explanation of the origin of the Kanji, to help you remember what the Kanji is drawn like, why, and what each means..
I have found this book immensely helpful. As a straightforward Kanji Dictionary, it's only so-so, because it's not organized by stroke order or some similar method.. --but, knowing the reason for each line in a Kanji helps me to draw them correctly when I need to, interpret them correctly when I see them, and not accidentally add an extra piece to a Kanji that doesn't belong there. The Mnemonic devices weren't as helpful, to me--but they may help some.. --all in all, I found this book necessary in order to have any chance at all at remembering Kanji, and despite it's less than optimum potential as a Kanji Dictionary, it works well enough that I don't have to buying one until I can afford it. Kanji are facinating, and I've caught myself reading this book when I should be studying.
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