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Title: Remembering the Hiragana/Katakana: A Complete Course on How to Teach Yourself by James W. Heisig, Helmut Morsbach, Kazue Kurebayashi, Kazue Kurebayashe ISBN: 4889960724 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.57
Rating: 4
Summary: BUY THIS BOOK FIRST
Comment: WOW!! I got this book yesterday and I already know all the hiragana. I could have already learned the katakana as well, but the book suggests waiting a day in between learning the two.
Heisig invents little stories that serve as mnemonic devices for remembering each of the kana. The stories are sometimes EXTREMELY far fetched. Bottom line: they work. I'm not an expert on Japanese language acquisition, just someone who wants to learn the language. I'm sure to a lot of people Heisig's method seems silly. All I know is after studying the book for a day I have an ACTIVE understanding of the kana. I can read and write them without any problems. The only downside of this book is that he doesn't include longer texts written in kana. [He does give at least three examples of words that use not only the character you're studying but also all the characters you've learned up to that point.] Buy this book and learn to read Japanese today!
Rating: 4
Summary: Worked for me...
Comment: I am a beginning Japanese student, and I found the book extremely helpful for learning and remembering Hiragana. The technique and structure of the material works very well. I have not begun to learn Katakana, so I can't speak to this part of the book.
Some other reviewers have noted the technique employed as "gimmicky"; however, the memorization technique used is a well known method for memorization, and in my opinion works well for learning Hiragana. I think some other reviews complained about some of the associations which I can agree with. Nevertheless, one can come up with their own associations if they don't find the author's to be useful.
As noted in other reviews, the book gives little attention to the accented characters; no discussion of the combinations of a consonant and ya, yu or yo; etc. The author notes in the introduction to Hiragana that the objective is to learn and remember the 46 characters. This it does very well in my opinion; merely using memorization would have required much more time and effort I would think. If one seriously intends to learn Japanese, then other learning materials will certainly be required.
Rating: 2
Summary: Far too complicated
Comment: I am loathe to write a bad review of anything, but this book was a real disappointment. It attempts to teach the reader hiragana and katakana through anecdotes that range from the slightly odd to the horribly confusing. Worse still is that it teaches the characters in non-dictionary order. Can you imagine teaching anyone the English alphabet starting at P then skipping to A, then to W and so on? One is much better off getting a book that shows the correct way to write the characters and hiragana/katakana charts and memorizing the characters in dictionary order and without the confusing anecdotes.
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