Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Waste you Money!, July 21, 2002
By A Customer
I brought this a while back to help me learn Japanese. I expected that the expensive price meant a quality language course. I was completely dissapointed. The package says that the course will enable you to speak, READ, and WRITE the language (emphasis mine). However the book uses only roomaji (the Roman alphabet) and is concerned only with speaking. The Hiragana and Katakana(Japanese phonetic alphabets) aren't that hard to learn. Why doesn't the book teach them? Moreover, being copywrited in the early 60's, the book is completely out of date. My Japanese friends informed me that using the word "jibiki" for dictionary (which the book teaches) sounds horribly old fashion and archaic. The dialogues are really stupid (For example we get to learn how to say "Boy, these are pretty ashtrays!") and the drills are mindless substitution drills as opposed to actual comprehension. Grammar is explained rather poorly. Finally the vocabulary introduced is insufficient and rather poor. For example we get to learn about buying cigarettes and ashtrays, but there is no vocabulary for the college student, or vocabulary dealing with business.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exellent for the serious student, April 9, 2005
The cover sais hear it, speak it, write it, read it.
the write it, read it part is in another companion text
book. ISBN # 0-300-01913-0 Reading Japanese (Yale Language
Series)that is to be studied after mastering the 10th
lesson in "Beginning Japanese" the text book included
in this set.
This set is for those who wish to become fluent not for those
trying to just get by. After having bought many Japanese language
learning aids through the years I have always gone back to this
set for its extensive practice drills and no nonsense approach.
The examples in the other reviews are correct in stating that
some of the material is old fashioned, it is also true that in
japan the old fashioned way of speaking is also the more formal
polite way. I will never buy an ashtray or cigarettes in japan
but its not hard to substitute a noun, those exercises are only
there to teach the pattern. Don't be discouraged.
This is college level learning if you are serious.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Masticating Japanese, June 15, 1998
One wonders how it would be possible to master reading and writing Japanese, when the accompanying booklet, "Beginning Japanese Part I" is typeset only in archaic romaji, circa 1963. I thought that it might be possible for the audio CDs to redeem the package, but I found myself listening, instead, to what sounded like a drugged-out school ma'am introducing drills in a listless, uninspiring tone. Whatsmore, these may be CDs, but they're poorly reproduced from ancient low-fi cassettes. You can actually hear the reverse side of the original tapes mumbling away in the background. Despite being packaged in a deceivingly slick plastic case, "Mastering Japanese" looks and sounds like a relic from the Pacific War. This, incidentally, might shed some light onto the packaging's claim: "The same course used by the U.S. government to train diplomatic personnel." I'm sure I'll find some use for the CDs, but this is by no means the modern kana-ised product I'd envisaged. The "Power Japanese" CD-ROM would be a much wiser investment in language learning for around the same price.
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by James W. Heisig
