Remembering the Kanji II: A Systematic Guide to Reading Japanese Characters

Remembering the Kanji #2

by James W. Heisig

Beneath the notorious inconsistencies in the way the Japanese language has come to pronounce the characters it received from China in the fifth century, there lies a solid and rather ample base of coherent patterns. Discovering these patterns can reduce to a minimum the time spent in brute
memorization of sounds unrelated to written forms. Volume II of REMEMBERING THE KANJI takes you step by step through the varieties of phonetic pattern and offers helpful hints for learning kanji that resist systematization.

Genres: Japanese Literature, Language, Japan, Reference, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Linguistics

397 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1990

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Over the course of this book I've come to believe that Heisig's approach to learning Kanji is fairly misguided. I mostly kept with it because of inertia (I already had the flash cards, after all), but in reality I'd much rather have learned them "in context" - in sentences, in phrases, etc. These compounds are basically meaningless in isolation, and I'm not sure studying them like this without even any of the etymological reasons is helpful at all, it's definitely learning them "the hard way".

[Carlos Angel Gomez Honig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following the first volume of Remembering the Kanji, the present work provides students with helpful tools for learning the pronunciation of the kanji. Behind the notorious inconsistencies in the way the Japanese language has come to pronounce the characters it received from China lie several coherent patterns. Identifying these patterns and arranging them in logical order can reduce dramatically the amount of time spent in the brute memorisation of sounds unrelated to written forms. Many of the "primitive elements," or building blocks, used in the drawing of the characters also serve to indicate the "Chinese reading" that particular kanji use, chiefly in compound terms. By learning one of the kanji that uses such a "signal primitive," one can learn the entire group at the same time. In this way, Remembering the Kanji 2 lays out the varieties of phonetic pattern and offers helpful hints for learning readings, that might otherwise appear completely random, in an efficient and rational way. Individual frames cross-reference the kanji to alternate readings and to the frame in volume 1 in which the meaning and writing of the kanji was first introduced. A parallel system of pronouncing the kanji, their "Japanese readings," uses native Japanese words assigned to particular Chinese characters. Although these are more easily learned because of the association of the meaning to a single word, the author creates a kind of phonetic alphabet of single syllable words, each connected to a simple Japanese word, and shows how they can be combined to help memorise particularly troublesome vocabulary. The 4th edition has been updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the government in 2010 as "general-use" kanji.

**

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leveling Up My Japanese

This is an excellent continuation to the fundamentals of Remembering the Kanji: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters

This is difficult, but rewarding.

I am glad I got this book, and I am actively working at improving my Japanese!

4.4/5

[Fletcher]

Great resource. Well organized and thorough. This is where I fell off the tracks of the Heisig system. It’s way too serious for me, a very casual learner.