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Reading Japanese
This new text has been designed to met the special needs of the foreigner who wants to begin learning to read Japanese before having completed a first-year course in speaking the language. It presupposes no previous knowledge of the Japanese writing system. In twenty-five lessons it introduces katakana, hiragana, and 425 kanji, providing an excellent foundation for the use of available intermediate and advanced texts. Reading Japanese is designed to be used either as a classroom text or in self-study programs. It is coordinated with Beginning Japanese, by the same authors.
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First published June 1, 1976
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 5, 2012
This is a truly excellent resource for learning written Japanese. Great pains were taken to introduce the characters in such a way that they can be used immediately and repeatedly from that point forward. For instance, when beginning with the Katakana characters, rather than teaching the characters in canonical order, it starts with just the two characters “su” and “mi”, and from those teaches you to write “Sue”, “Smith”, “Miss Sue Smith”, etc. It then quickly builds on these, ensuring at each step that the next small set of characters introduces a large array of new things you can immediately learn to write.
Accusations that the material is out-of-date, are not wrong (this is the reason I must give the book four stars rather than five). The book was published in 1976! Much of the kanji is used a little differently, or has been replaced in certain uses by other characters. Of course, most of it is still applicable, and when no newer resources come even close to being as effective, you learn you must make do with information that may be out-of-date–better to have slightly-dated but solid knowledge of the most common uses of several hundred kanji than to continue to struggle to learn your first hundred or so.
Note that the author has written a more recently-published set of books, Japanese: The Written Language; I have not examined these but I suspect they may correspond to much of the same material, but perhaps more recently-updated. It might be worthwhile to look into those.
This book, Reading Japanese, is intended to be used in conjunction with a companion grammar book, Beginning Japanese. However, if you are already familiar with basic Japanese grammar, you will probably find that you can do without the companion.
A note on romanization: you should not be scared off by the fact that it uses “si” instead of “shi”, or “hu” instead of “fu”. Many Japanese will romanize similarly, and a serious student of the language will need to become comfortable with systems such as Kun’rei-shiki in addition to the more popular (at least among English speakers) Hepburn romanization system. Recognizing “si” and “shi” as the same phoneme with the same pronunciation will help the student become stronger in the language.
Weighing in at only 425 kanji, this book will clearly not be enough on its own to give you command of the written language; but it provides a very excellent start. Follow it up with something like A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language (another somewhat-dated but excellent book), which covers a much fuller set.
Accusations that the material is out-of-date, are not wrong (this is the reason I must give the book four stars rather than five). The book was published in 1976! Much of the kanji is used a little differently, or has been replaced in certain uses by other characters. Of course, most of it is still applicable, and when no newer resources come even close to being as effective, you learn you must make do with information that may be out-of-date–better to have slightly-dated but solid knowledge of the most common uses of several hundred kanji than to continue to struggle to learn your first hundred or so.
Note that the author has written a more recently-published set of books, Japanese: The Written Language; I have not examined these but I suspect they may correspond to much of the same material, but perhaps more recently-updated. It might be worthwhile to look into those.
This book, Reading Japanese, is intended to be used in conjunction with a companion grammar book, Beginning Japanese. However, if you are already familiar with basic Japanese grammar, you will probably find that you can do without the companion.
A note on romanization: you should not be scared off by the fact that it uses “si” instead of “shi”, or “hu” instead of “fu”. Many Japanese will romanize similarly, and a serious student of the language will need to become comfortable with systems such as Kun’rei-shiki in addition to the more popular (at least among English speakers) Hepburn romanization system. Recognizing “si” and “shi” as the same phoneme with the same pronunciation will help the student become stronger in the language.
Weighing in at only 425 kanji, this book will clearly not be enough on its own to give you command of the written language; but it provides a very excellent start. Follow it up with something like A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language (another somewhat-dated but excellent book), which covers a much fuller set.
September 25, 2011
This book builds on Jorden's 'Japanese: The Spoken Language' or her older set 'Beginning Japanese', which I used. It thoroughly covers Kana and 425 Kanji.
The book is unique in just how much training you get as you learn the script: how to write each individual Kanji, reading drills, question drills, lengthy readings with new grammar explained, handwritten script reading section with comprehension questions. All doable for self-study.The book is huge and you get so much to work with, so I was very pleased with the book.
If you haven't used her other books, or some other thorough romanized book(s) like Martin's 'Essential Japanese', I think you will have difficulty using this book because it has proper reading passages where you need to know basic Japanese grammar.
Together with her other books on the spoken language, this book prepares you well for comprehensive Intermediate level material, for example Nobuko Mizutani's 'Intermediate Japanese an Integrated Course', which I used for this level.
The book is unique in just how much training you get as you learn the script: how to write each individual Kanji, reading drills, question drills, lengthy readings with new grammar explained, handwritten script reading section with comprehension questions. All doable for self-study.The book is huge and you get so much to work with, so I was very pleased with the book.
If you haven't used her other books, or some other thorough romanized book(s) like Martin's 'Essential Japanese', I think you will have difficulty using this book because it has proper reading passages where you need to know basic Japanese grammar.
Together with her other books on the spoken language, this book prepares you well for comprehensive Intermediate level material, for example Nobuko Mizutani's 'Intermediate Japanese an Integrated Course', which I used for this level.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews