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Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana: A Workbook for Self-Study
Learning Hiragana and Katakana is a systematic and comprehensive Japanese workbook that is perfect for self study or in a classroom setting.
Written Japanese combines three different types of characters: the Chinese characters known as kanji, and two Japanese sets of phonetic letters, hiragana and katakana, known collectively as kana, that must be mastered before the Japanese kanji can be learned.
Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana provides beginning-level students of Japanese a thorough grounding in the basic hiragana and katakana phonetic symbols or syllabaries. A comprehensive introduction presents their basic function, origin, pronunciation and usage. The main body of the book is devoted to presenting the 92 hira and kata characters along with their variations, giving step-by-step guidelines on how to write each character neatly in the correct stroke order, with plentiful practice spaces provided for handwriting practice.
This Japanese workbook includes:
Systematic and comprehensive coverage of the two Japanese kana systems.
Ample provision for Japanese kana practice, review, and self-testing at several levels
Detailed reference section explaining the origin and function of kana, and the various kana combinations.
Access to online Japanese audio files to aid in correct pronunciation.
Helpful additional information for language students accustomed to romanized Japanese.
Vocabulary selected for usefulness and cultural relevance.
About this new edition:
The new third edition has been expanded and revised to include many additional reading and writing exercises. Accompanying online recordings demonstrate the correct pronunciation of all the characters, vocabulary, and sentences in the book.
Written Japanese combines three different types of characters: the Chinese characters known as kanji, and two Japanese sets of phonetic letters, hiragana and katakana, known collectively as kana, that must be mastered before the Japanese kanji can be learned.
Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana provides beginning-level students of Japanese a thorough grounding in the basic hiragana and katakana phonetic symbols or syllabaries. A comprehensive introduction presents their basic function, origin, pronunciation and usage. The main body of the book is devoted to presenting the 92 hira and kata characters along with their variations, giving step-by-step guidelines on how to write each character neatly in the correct stroke order, with plentiful practice spaces provided for handwriting practice.
This Japanese workbook includes:
Systematic and comprehensive coverage of the two Japanese kana systems.
Ample provision for Japanese kana practice, review, and self-testing at several levels
Detailed reference section explaining the origin and function of kana, and the various kana combinations.
Access to online Japanese audio files to aid in correct pronunciation.
Helpful additional information for language students accustomed to romanized Japanese.
Vocabulary selected for usefulness and cultural relevance.
About this new edition:
The new third edition has been expanded and revised to include many additional reading and writing exercises. Accompanying online recordings demonstrate the correct pronunciation of all the characters, vocabulary, and sentences in the book.
128 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 2006
41 people are currently reading
443 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth G. Henshall
21 books18 followersKenneth G. Henshall is a graduate of the universities of London (B.A.), Sydney (PhD), and Adelaide (Dip. Ed.), and is now a professor of Japanese at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He has also taught at the universities of Auckland, Western Australia, California and Waikato. He is well-known for his translations of literature and history books, and is the author of A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 22, 2014
Received this workbook a few days ago. Still working on in, review is coming!
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EDIT: I was lucky enough to receive this book from Tuttle publishing. Thank you Tuttle for sending this to me without any damage or problems!
Japanese is one of the trickiest languages out there for westerners. Having 3 distinct alphabets does little to encourage people to study it. Luckily, Hiragana and Katakana are really easy to learn in a short period of time!
I self studied Japanese a little in high school. With flashcards, I learned all of the hiragana and katakana, but soon forgot it all after not practicing it enough. Now I'm in college and I'm actually taking classes.
The problem is that in my school, If you're not minoring in Japanese, you cannot take the classes that teach you how to write in Japanese! Isn't that crazy? In class, focus is put more on grammar and speaking rather than writing and reading, which is sad. Heck, even our textbook is all in romanji. As a person who is looking to be a high level Japanese speaker in the future, I knew I had to study writing hiragana and katakana on my own.
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I really like the appearance of this workbook. It's red and white, the colors of the Japanese flag. It let's people who are searching for Japanese workbooks immediately know that this workbook is for learning Japanese. It's very easy to spot.
In the beginning, the author explains what hiragana is, where it came from, and how and where it's used. It also gives a quick rundown of all of the kana characters. The explanation is pretty simple, not too overwhelming for a beginner.
After the description, the rest of the book is broken down into sections. Each section has 10 kana characters starting with hiragana. This makes it very easy to study 10 every week. It shows stroke order, how to pronounce it, and has several empty boxes to practice writing each kana. At the end of each section, there is a mini review/quiz where you have to write words using the kana that you just learned.
I like how you get to learn new Japanese vocabulary while learning how to write in hiragana/katakana, however, I do not like how the answer on how to write the word is there. In my opinion, the correct way to write the word should be on the next page or something. I feel like If it was on the next page, then people would really have to remember how to write the word. I know you can cover the page with something, but It just feels like people would cheat. Even putting the kana word on the right side of the page (instead of the left) would be better because then the first thing people would see is the romanji, not the kana.
At the end of the book it has a final review section where you'll have to remember everything you've learned. I think this section is the best because the activities are fun. It includes many fill in the blank games, an International cities quiz, A correct the kana quiz, a matching quiz, many translations quizzes, and a word search! The iroha verse at the end was particularly interesting.
At the very end, it includes photocopy-able squares for more writing practice.
Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana is an extremely simple workbook for mastering hiragana and Katakana. It did not take me long to finish. And now I can read and write hiragana and katakana with no problems. This book is for the user that wants to get straight to the point, and does not care for lengthy descriptions and rules. I really recommend this for the beginner who is learning hiragana and katakana from total scratch. But it's minus a half star because of the answers at the end of the review sections are visible!!
------
EDIT: I was lucky enough to receive this book from Tuttle publishing. Thank you Tuttle for sending this to me without any damage or problems!
Japanese is one of the trickiest languages out there for westerners. Having 3 distinct alphabets does little to encourage people to study it. Luckily, Hiragana and Katakana are really easy to learn in a short period of time!
I self studied Japanese a little in high school. With flashcards, I learned all of the hiragana and katakana, but soon forgot it all after not practicing it enough. Now I'm in college and I'm actually taking classes.
The problem is that in my school, If you're not minoring in Japanese, you cannot take the classes that teach you how to write in Japanese! Isn't that crazy? In class, focus is put more on grammar and speaking rather than writing and reading, which is sad. Heck, even our textbook is all in romanji. As a person who is looking to be a high level Japanese speaker in the future, I knew I had to study writing hiragana and katakana on my own.
-----
I really like the appearance of this workbook. It's red and white, the colors of the Japanese flag. It let's people who are searching for Japanese workbooks immediately know that this workbook is for learning Japanese. It's very easy to spot.
In the beginning, the author explains what hiragana is, where it came from, and how and where it's used. It also gives a quick rundown of all of the kana characters. The explanation is pretty simple, not too overwhelming for a beginner.
After the description, the rest of the book is broken down into sections. Each section has 10 kana characters starting with hiragana. This makes it very easy to study 10 every week. It shows stroke order, how to pronounce it, and has several empty boxes to practice writing each kana. At the end of each section, there is a mini review/quiz where you have to write words using the kana that you just learned.
I like how you get to learn new Japanese vocabulary while learning how to write in hiragana/katakana, however, I do not like how the answer on how to write the word is there. In my opinion, the correct way to write the word should be on the next page or something. I feel like If it was on the next page, then people would really have to remember how to write the word. I know you can cover the page with something, but It just feels like people would cheat. Even putting the kana word on the right side of the page (instead of the left) would be better because then the first thing people would see is the romanji, not the kana.
At the end of the book it has a final review section where you'll have to remember everything you've learned. I think this section is the best because the activities are fun. It includes many fill in the blank games, an International cities quiz, A correct the kana quiz, a matching quiz, many translations quizzes, and a word search! The iroha verse at the end was particularly interesting.
At the very end, it includes photocopy-able squares for more writing practice.
Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana is an extremely simple workbook for mastering hiragana and Katakana. It did not take me long to finish. And now I can read and write hiragana and katakana with no problems. This book is for the user that wants to get straight to the point, and does not care for lengthy descriptions and rules. I really recommend this for the beginner who is learning hiragana and katakana from total scratch. But it's minus a half star because of the answers at the end of the review sections are visible!!
November 15, 2018
I had been using apps to learn vocabulary and even learn the hiragana and katakana alphabet, but I felt like I needed to be able to actually write the characters and words out to help me understand the language better and internalize the kana better. The book provides a brief background on hiragana and katakana and when the two forms are used, which I appreciated, and then jumps in to practicing writing out each hiragana and katakana letter. The book adds in vocabulary words throughout and even has a few lines to copy and write out some sentences as well. Although the focus is not on these areas, it was a nice addition to the main goal of learning to write hiragana and katakana. A couple of downsides for this book might be that I wish there was just a little bit of grammar, especially in writing out and translating sentences. Also I wish that some of the kana that you learn do look a little different in practice, so sometimes it was hard for me to recognize some of the letters when used in different settings or with different fonts. It is a small problem, but it was a little frustrating. However, by the end of the book I felt pretty comfortable recognizing and writing out each of the different letters for hiragana and katakana, and this book really helped perpetuate my interest in learning Japanese.
November 28, 2019
Uno dei migliori libri per imparare velocemente i kana (hiragana & katakana).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews