Customer Reviews

Remembering the Kana: The Hiragana / The Katakana

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

But obviously close enough to warrant a "perfect" rating.

While I could easily chime in with the other 5-stars, let me tell you what this book lacks.

During the Hiragana, not much time is spent on the plosive and voiced mark. You'll probably figure them out mid-way through the Katakana section, but still, he could have put more effort into explaining them, even just in an appendix.

Also, while he gives you a great device to help you understand the order words appear in a Japanese dictionary, he doesn't explain it all that well. You'll need to fumble around a little in a Japanese dictionary to figure it out.

Also, for some reason, in the katakana section, he occassionally assumes you know some basic kanji. Why this would be the case when most readers have just finished hiragana, I don't know. But you can get through it all right anyway, trust me. I don't know any kanji, and I'm doing all right (katakana seems easier than hiragana, actually).

And finally, and most importantly, NOTHING is said about dipthongs. What are dipthongs? Well, I myself haven't quite figured it out yet, although I'm on the right track (a small "ya" written to the right and down of "chi," for instance, makes it into "cha"--confusing, right?). Anyway, how hard would it have been to have a little apendix on that? It really warrants a lesson in and of itself, but all he says is something like "all you've got left to learn are dipthongs, which you'll find in the introductory pages of any Japanese grammar book". Um, like which grammar book? I bought this one to teach me.

Anyway, these quibbles can't outweigh my love and enthusiasm for this book. I really works, I SWEAR to you. I can read hiragana, and I've had the book for a week! 30 minutes a day and a little more practice is all it takes. If you have the dedication, this book will help you do it, no doubt about it.

Once you're done here, just move on to Heisig's excellent series of "Remembering the Kanji" (Vol-1 is basic Kanji, Vol-2 is pronounciation of those kanji, more kanji, and some grammar, Vol-3 is advanced stuff). This track is definitely the wisest choice, as it will prepare you well, and you could easily be fluent in under a year if you work at it every day with him.

If you just want a jump-start into the language after learning hiragana/katakana (but PLEASE learn that first), then try Japanese for Busy People (Kana Version). But Heisig's route really is best, as unorthodox as it might seem at first.

To sum up: get this book. And avoid romanji, in all its forms, at ALL COSTS. It will only hinder you if you truly want fluency in reading/writing and speaking Japanese.

When I picked this book up I was somewhat worried about learning the kana. My brother, a fluent speaker of Japanese since childhood, had informed me that there is a lot more than just the basic kana to learn. While there are "only" 46 kana, this merely refers to the basic sounds available in Japanese. This does not include the variations (25) and combinations (33 in both kana plus an additional 19 in katakana to help with foreign sounds and onomatopoeia). Considering only ONE kana is the same in both sets (he - looking like and pronounced like a stack of hay), you are looking at 225+ symbols and combinations to remember. This presents a much more daunting task.

This book makes use of a learning method that would really only work to someone who is already a fluent speaker of English, and someone who can learn using a mnemonic method. This book might not be for everyone, but out of all my friends that I have suggested this book to, only 1 (out of probably 8 or 9 people) has had trouble using this method. It uses association to things which we, as native English speakers, will find familiar. In the example above, "he" (a stack of hay), helps both with remembering how to draw and say it. Granted, some of the mnemonics are very silly, but I found this helped me remember them and caused them to stick out in my mind. The katakana section relies a little less on mnemonics, for in many cases it is easier to associate the katakana symbol to its hiragana counterpart instead of to a new mnemonic.

The previous edition of this book (same ISBN, but the first edition of the combined books) barely touched on the combinations/diphthongs, and made learning those a separate affair. However, the new 2nd Edition (printed December 2003) does, and not only explains them, but has a chart with all of the examples and pronunciations. Now, with one book, you can learn to draw, read, and pronounce (including combinations/diphthongs) both sets of kana!

From start to finish, the book says it can teach you the kana in 3 hours for each syllabary. For me, this was true. For my own benefit and for fluency, I sit down and write them all out once a day as well and now I can read hiragana and katakana nearly as easily as I can with English. However, after the first couple days of doing that, I can already see that the repetition is unnecessary. You'll find that after the initial learning, and with some practice, the mnemonics will fade, and you'll just know the symbol, and will have saved you countless hours of boring repetition. This will also help you avoid Romaji as you learn to speak Japanese, because you will have a kana symbol to associate with sounds instead of thinking it up in English/Romaji. To sum up, buy this book!

James W. Heisig swears, in the two slim volumes that make up this combined book, to be able to teach you to use the two main Japanese syllabaries in three hours each. And I bet he could do it, too. But don't try to learn them quickly, try instead to learn them well.

Each syllabary is broken down into six half-hour lessons. The symbols themselves are arranged in what Heisig believes to be the best order for learning, as opposed to the order in which they're arranged in dictionaries. Some people will disparage this system because it's not the way Japanese schoolchildren are introduced to their writing system. However, Japanese schoolchildren are introduced to these writing systems at a much younger and more impressionable age than you probably were, so you need to do what will teach you the language, not what taught them.

The mnemonic devices used in this book aren't always terribly helpful; some are a hindrance. Which bits will help which people and which will harm will depend on you, so enter this book willing to disregard the elements that don't aid you personally. A good judgment and some knowledge of how you personally learn will serve you as you struggle to get through the process.

My Japanese friends admit that their written language is very complex, and unless you learn at a very early age, you'll always have difficulty. However, it's definitely a worthwhile language, and a worthwhile writing system, to study if you desire to be a worldly person. This book provides an outline to learning if you know how to use it, and if you don't just mindlessly follow your teacher's instructions.

This book quickly teaches native English speakers to read and write both of the Japanese syllabaries, the hiragana and the katakana. (A syllabary is like an alphabet, only each symbol stands for a whole syllable.) You really can learn each syllabary in three hours using the clever and often bizarre mnemonic devices in this book.

The course is divided into twelve lessons, and Heisig helpfully advises taking a break between lessons. I did one or two lessons per day, and to reinforce what I'd learned, I made flash cards and did some kana drills I found on the Web. (These programs are good for review, but not for learning the kana in the first place, since they rely on brute-force memorization.)

One small gripe: The book doesn't cover combinations of kana, some of which make intuitive sense (mi + yo = myo) but some of which don't (shi + yo = sho), and it doesn't cover lengthened vowels or doubled consonants. As noted in the book, these fairly simple matters will probably be included in whatever other book you're using to learn Japanese, but I thought they should have been included here to make this course truly "complete."

I can't imagine a quicker or more effective method of learning the kana than this. If you're learning Japanese, get this book!

This book is actually two slim books bound into one volume. The first is Remembering the Kana: the Hiragana, and the second is Remembering the Kana: the Katakana. The customer images (photos at top) from Benjamin Mischler show both sides of the book so you get a feel for how it is bound. I have the version with the cover he shows, and the ISBN is the one listed for this book.

I give this volume mixed reviews, because the I would rate the two books it contains very differently. First, an overview: The book is laid out with the two sections back to back so that when you are reading one section the other is upside down. This is a helpful layout because as you are flipping through the hiragana section you don't accidentally stray into the katakana section (and vice versa), so it's easier to keep the two syllabaries separate. Each book has you learn the kana in a very specific order. Each page contains one syllable, and the bottom of the page tells you what page you should go to next and what page you came from last. Each of the two books is broken up into sections, with the instruction to do one section at a time, spending about a half hour on each section. Each page has the romanji (English equivalent sound) on the outer edge of the page and the kana on the inner edge. This allows you to flip through the book to test yourself, only seeing the romanji version, and then opening the book further to see the kana "answer." Another strong point of the book is that it shows examples of the kana written in a number of different fonts. This helps you get a feel for different ways you might see the character written, and it also helps with understanding what aspects of the character are "essential." At the bottom of the page there are several words (usually two or three) using the characters you've already learned to help you test yourself on what you are supposed to know and to see the character in context. The middle of the page includes a sketch of how to write the character, with the order of strokes, and a description of a memory device (a little story) to help you learn the character. The quality of the memory devices is the main area where the two books differ, and I'll discuss this by section.

The Hiragana: For the Hiragana section the memory devices are often very elaborate, but memorable (think of the seven dwarfs being pursued by a wasp which flies down and grabs two of them). Not all of the memory devices will necessarily work well for you, but once you've learned how the system works you can substitute your own memory devices. There were several characters for which I just couldn't "get into" the memory device provided by the author, so I made up my own. The order in which the individual characters are presented is very helpful, and the author makes use of similar elements of characters to help you remember them. There is only very minimal coverage of dipthongs, plosives, voicing, and long vowels. This is enough to get you started (e.g. understand that they exist), but not enough to really understand these topics.

The Katakana section: Note that this section is written by a different set of authors. The katakana section is, in my opinion, pretty weak. For many of the katakana the authors simply don't give a memory device. Instead they rely on the similarity to the hiragana. For some of the katakana this works nicely, as the katakana character is similar enough to the hiragana that it's easy to remember. For others, this device fails miserably. At times the authors rely on a sort of "intuitive" connection between the hiragana and katakana. They say something like, if you move your hand as if you were writing the hiragana but substitute a slash here and straight lines for curved lines you will "automatically" get the katakana. Sorry, but it doesn't work for me. If this is your first introduction to the kana (and isn't that sort of the point of buying this book?) there's too much that isn't specified in this approach. I ended up having to make up my own memory devices for all of these characters. This is fine, but I wish they hadn't relied so much on the "you'll just figure it out" approach. Also, in the katakana section there are several times when there are two characters that are essentially the same, except for slight variations in angles of lines or direction of the strokes. For example, shi and tsu are almost identical, as are n and so. The authors never mention this, though, so when you get to the second character of the set you think, "didn't I just study this?? Isn't this that other character?" When you go back and compare them you can see the similarities and differences, but I think it would have been much more helpful for the authors to pair these characters and point out the differences so you could start out learning those characters by thinking of their differences. Finally, in the katakana section there are a number of times when the example katakana words and phrases use characters you haven't learned yet if you are following the order specified in the book. This is annoying and is just poor editing.

In general the editing of the whole volume leaves something to be desired. There are a number of minor typos in the English descriptions. They aren't enough to interfere with your ability to read the text or to slow you down significantly, but they show sloppy editing. Also, as was mentioned by another reader, the technique to remember the order of the syllabary is not helpful. The author just has you sing the syllables in order. There are better mnemonic devices out there (e.g. "Ah Kana Signs! Take note how many you read well - n", from Henshall and Takagaki's book on learning hiragana and katakana).

Despite these critiques, I am still giving this book four stars because I think the technique is very helpful in learning the kana, and the things the authors do well they do very well. The layout of each page is fantastic, and the approach to learning is also very good. I found the use of memory pictures to be very helpful. The use of the story-pictures to aid memory is not intended to be a long term device. As you use the kana more you stop thinking about the pictures and start just recognizing the syllables in context. The story-pictures are very useful, though in the initial learning of each syllable. In other words, while you are at the stage of needing to think about each character as you read a word, using the memory devices will bring the right syllable or character to mind. It is this initial learning stage that is greatly aided by this book. I don't think this approach becomes a crutch because as you use the characters more your mind automatically uses the simplest tool to help you retrieve the right sound or character. Once you can recognize or write them by sight, the simplest tool is that immediate recall, without going through the picture. As you get faster in reading and writing kana, you will find that for more commonly used characters, you no longer need the memory device, you just know them. For more obscure characters you may need the device to jog your memory. Once you are fluent with the characters, the memory devices will drop out of the picture.

In addition to this book I would also recommend "A Guide to Learning Hiragana and Katakana: First steps to reading and writing Japanese" by Henshall and Takagaki. This book is a nice complement, because it offers lots of space to practice individual characters (as a workbook) and it offers LOTS of examples for practice in reading and writing. It also has better descriptions and examples and practice for the plosives, long vowels, dipthongs, and voicing. This book helps solidify what you are learning in Remembering the Kana. I think the two are a good pair.

I studied Japanese in college about 6-7 years ago, and started taking it again this September. Somehow, I still remembered about 90% of the hiragana and katakana, but I was not confident about the kana that I forgot, so I decided to get this book after reading favorable reviews for it on Amazon.

The traditional way to learn the kana (at least when I was in college) is to learn them in order (a,i,u,e,o,ka,ki,ku, etc.) and simply write each one multiple times. Some people respond to this kind of learning; others don't.

This book takes a different approach and provides imagery in the form of funny or strange sentences about the look of the kana so that it sticks in your memory. The author does *not* draw pictures on top of the kana like some college texts that I've seen; he simply provides weird/funny comments, stories, and/or keywords that comment on the look and sound of the kana, which help the kana "stick" in your mind.

The recommended way to read this book is to start with the hiragana, and learn about 5 per day. Then, after you've mastered the hiragana, move on the katakana section.

The hiragana section was written really well, with the format described above. However, it seems the katakana section was rushed and was not as creative, which is why I give it four stars instead of five.

Overall, I found the book to be very helpful in learning the kana, and would highly recommend it to students of Japanese, both new and old.

It not only worked, it worked in under three hours - two hours and forty-three minutes, to be exact. I live in Japan, so see hiragana and katakana everywhere. Now, I recognize the former easily, and will spend time soon learning the latter. I hope it will be as easy! The trick with this book is to suspend disbelief. Don't think too much about the logic of his mnenomics, but do use them exactly as he says and you will do fine. If you are cynical about the process or try to modify this text for your own purposes, obviously it will be less effective. That should be self-evident, but there are lots of reviews below which show that some readers made these elementary mistakes. This is a great book and really works.

UPDATE

I reviewed this book first after completing the hiragana section and put off my study of the katakana because, frankly, I was somewhat discouraged by many of the reviews I read here. These were generally saying that it was not as good as the hiragana volume, but I found it was actually just as useful. In fact, the method builds on the hiragana already learned and uses the two to reinforce each other, so you wind up with revision and learning at the same time. It is also much faster - about two hours total to complete, and katakana is really useful in Japan, as a non-native already knows many of the words from English (i.e. 'rentaru' for 'rental', etc...). Suddenly you can read! I am now 400 or so kanji into Heisig's next book after forty minutes Mon-Fri for five weeks and can't rave about his approach enough. His books will save you tons of time in the long run and make learning fun and permanent.

This book claims to be able to teach you the Hiragana in 3 hours. It actually works! Flip the book over for part 2 and you'll learn the Katakana.

The author's writing is very personal. While reading, I felt as though he were speaking to me, one on one. He gives a description of each character, instructions about the proper way to write it, examples of the character in other fonts, practice examples to test yourself as you move along and tells you the english approximation of the sound each character makes. The lessons are broken down into 30 minute segments, so you don't have to set aside 3 straight hours to get through it. I did one lesson a day at my desk on my lunch breaks.

If you get this book, start with the introduction, not lesson 1. You'll get to know the author and about how to use the book properly.

This book uses a mnemonic teaching method, which one does well to be skeptical about. And the mnemonics used by Mr. Heisig in this book are positively weird (see the page for "sa" as an example).

The odd thing is, I discovered that when I took these weird mnemonics seriously, I learned quickly and the learning stuck for days. When I did not take the weird mnemonics seriously, my learning was more hit-and miss. I often find the mnemonics coming back into play now to help me quickly remember how to read or write a phoneme that had temporarily slipped away from me.

This book flies in the face of common sense, but I think that the author is actually onto something about how the human brain works and learns. I'm not sure what -- it might be the fact that the brain is a great associative engine and pattern-matcher.

In any case, this approach really worked for me, much better than the Tuttle approach that I had previously given up on.

This is really 2 books which are printed together: Remembering the hiragana and remembering the katakana.
The first of these is just amazing. The mnemonics were just brilliant, and I was able to learn to read and write all the hiragana characters in about three days.
The second is less impressive. While it is still a useful learning tool, many of the mnemonics are flawed. For example, several of them say things like "This character is easy to remember, it's just like the kanji for X" (If someone is trying to learn kana, is it realistic to expect them to already know kanji?), others say "This character is just like the equivalent hiragana, only with half of the lines missing." (While this is correct, and obvious if you already know the character in question, it does nothing at all to help you remember how to write it) and yet others say things like "Draw the hiragana, and then while your hand still remembers it, draw the katakana" .
Don't get me wrong, I do highly recommend this book, it's just a shame that they didn't take the time to make the second half as flawless as the first.