Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Beginner's Japanese Audiopackage

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

 

 

I have wanted to learn Japanese for a while, and looked into the "Japanese for Busy People" series and other series that students of the Japanese language recommended. All of the other series seemed too complicated for an absolute beginner. I had no idea where to begin, as they were all different versions for different types of beginners. I am an absolute beginner who wants to learn on her own (I have been to Japan twice, and I want to start speaking it beyond "hello," "goodbye" and "thank you" while I am there).

You will not go wrong with "Teach Yourself Beginner's Japanese" with the CD & booklet. It is completely accessible to a new learner, and it is fun. At first, I was a little confused as to how the CD and book worked together, but then you realize it's very simple (the book goes into more detail than the CD, which helps with pronunciation and word recognition, so you often must skip past the explanations to get to the next exercise).

I have had so much fun learning how to speak Japanese so far. I listen to it all of the time and practice when I can. I was never exceptional at learning languages, but this one is very easy once you start talking and practicing. I have built so much confidence with it, I feel I will soon be ready to take classes and learn some script!

If you've never attempted Japanese before, this book is a wonderful introduction to learning the basics and getting you started with your studies. The CDs that go along with it are a tremendous help and as long as you don't go too fast - as Helen Gilhooly advises herself that you not do - you can both pick things up and remember them efficiently. You are given lots of useful vocabulary words at an appropriate pace, are able to listen to Japanese conversations that increase in difficulty as you progress through the book, and practice + test yourself at the end of each chapter on what you've learned. The only downfall is that you're not introduced to writing in both the kana scripts, which is essential if you plan to do more than speak Japanese. A small intro to katakana is the topic of chapter 13, but that's about it. If you don't need to write in Japanese, however, chapters 14-20 are all about your visit to Japan: how to shop, converse with business men/women, order food, how to act as a guest in another person's home, etc. I simply used an online website to learn my kana, one that was in fact recommended from this very book!

I say buy this audiopackage and get started immediately!

This is a good series for getting started speaking Japanese if you have the CD and ignore the pronunciation guides that give vowel sounds based on british speech. An example is "o is pronounced like the o in hot", when it is actually a long "o" as in hole. At the very least, they should have a disclaimer at the beginning of the book stating that american speakers need to look elsewhere for pronuncition. All of the Japanese dialog is spoken correctly as far as I can tell, but the English speakers didn't bother to learn how to say the Japanese words and names that they say in their introductions. It makes it very difficult to know which things in the series are correct & worth learning, and which are bad habits. I gave it three stars because it is a mixed bag. Definitely don't bother getting this book unless you get the CD with it.

This book is so helpful..Especially if you have the cd's to go along with it. It's has helped me so much that i even talked in japanese with the people that owned the sushi restaurant down the street from me and i've only been study japanese for about a week it's so awesome everyone should get Teach Yourself Beginner's Japanese before Teach Yourself Japanese..So ya buy this book it's amazing what it can do for you.

This book is a lot better than I expected!

Great way for a dynamic but overeasy introduction to Japanese.

I have just begun to learn Japanese on my own. I knew absolutely no Japanese before I bought this book. I have had it for a week now, am on page 50 of 275 not including the index and dictionary, and am having an absolute blast with this book.

When I bought this book and cd package, my first thought was, "How could a person named Helen Gilhooly teach Japanese well?" After reading this book, I give her 2 thumbs up for an excellent book, and if I had more I would gladly give them. It is so good that I will actually take the time to tell you why I like it.

It takes no foreknowledge of Japanese to use this book to it's fullest extent. It explains everything in crystal clarity. After you learn something, it is constantly reinforced through the following conversations, and each conversation is fun to read and uses words that you learned from the earliest chapters of the book, as well as words that you have just now learned. It also uses words that you have not yet learned in the conversations, puts them in bold print, and has a box at the end of each conversation that explains the words it used. Also, contrary to other language books that simply give you a conversation and expect you to know exactly what they are saying and moves on, this book goes through the conversation sentence by sentence to explain exactly what they are saying and why they are saying it, occasionally saying something about Japanese culture as well.

The book takes you through the visit of An Jenkinsu (Anne Jenkins) to Japan, with her host family, the Yamaguchis. The conversations are always fun to read, I never find myself wanting to skip them, and they present numerous usages of the words you have learned. Anne goes to a Japanese language class, and meets friends there, and does all manner of things, so it is as much a story of Anne's stay in Japan as it is conversations, so it always stays interesting.

The only problem I have, which is more an observation than anything, is that the CD's are difficult to use in that it's hard to figure out where the conversations are in the CD, and I don't even think they have all of them recorded, and the Japanese people in the CD sound like they have a very bad cold. But other than that, this is the ideal Japanese language book. If this lets you know how much I like this book, as soon as I master this book, I FULLY intend to buy it's sequel, Teach Yourself Japanese (as opposed to Beginners Japanese).

this book/cd set is riddled with mistakes. First and foremost the pronounciation guide.

O sounds like the O in hot

I sounds like the I in Hit

A sounds like the A in Hat.

no no no no no.

Someone mentioned in their review that the pronounciations is based on British vowels.

Well, that's plain stupid because we're not learning British, we're not learning American, we're learning JAPANESE.

The JAPANESE pronounciations is ALWAYS Ah for A, Oh for O and EE for I. It doesn't matter if you're American, British, Chinese, Hispanic or Austrailian. The only proper pronounciation for A, O, and I is Ah, Oh, EE.

That's just the tip of the mistakes in this book.

I'd personally avoid it. Its not worth the $15.00 they're charging here, it wasn't worth the 12.00 I paid.

When you find mistakes right off the bat, how can you trust the rest of the book to teach you properly. With Japanese you have to be VERY careful and VERY accurate as words like Uta and Utta, Roku and Rokku, Obasan and Obaasan, they are spelled almost alike and sound almost alike, but they mean totally different things and if you learn the pronounciations incorrectly, you could change the meaning of a word. And in some cases that's really bad as some words if pronounced improperly can be swear words or insults.

So if you can't trust a book because of already known mistakes... you shouldn't buy it and waste your time.