Remembering The Hiragana

This book will help you teach yourself the writing and reading of all 46 characters each of Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabary from memory. By making use of a method of "imaginative memory," introduced in this book, you will be saved from the order of repetition. Following the method, you will be able to write and read all Japanese Kana in three hours and retain them by means of the incredible mnemonic methods. Instructions at the bottom of each page will ask you to skip backwards and forwards through the book, following the best "learning order." The lessons will guide you step by step through this process. As an added bonus, the book includes a supplement on "Learning How to Remember."

Following on the phenomenal success of Remembering the Kanji, the author has prepared a companion volume for learning the Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries of modern Japanese. In six short lessons of about twenty minutes, each of the two systems of "kana" writing are introduced in such a way that the absolute beginner can acquire fluency in writing in a fraction of the time normally devoted to the task. Using the same basic self-taught method devised for learning the kanji, and in collaboration with Helmut Morsbach and Kazue Kurebayashi, the author breaks the shapes of the two syllabaries into their component parts and draws on what he calls "imaginative memory" to aid the student in reassembling them into images that fix the sound of each particular kana to its writing. Now in its third edition, Remembering the Kana has helped tens of thousands of students of Japanese master the Hiragana and Katakana in a short amount of time . . . and have fun in the process.

Learning Hiragana and Katakana is a systematic and comprehensive Japanese workbook that is perfect for self-study or use 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 primary 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 generous 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.

There are three types of Japanese script--katakana, hiragana, and kanji. It is possible to read Japanese knowing only a limited number of kanji, but it is not possible with only a limited number of katakana or hiragana--one must know all of them. Let's Learn Hiragana, and its companion volume Let's Learn Katakana, is a textbook that introduces the learner to the basics of one of these fundamental Japanese scripts. Being a workbook, it contains all the exercises that allow the student to master hiragana by the time the book has been finished. Let's Learn Hiragana is a classic in the field, and the huge number of students that have used it successfully is a sign of its preeminence as a self-study guide.

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 memorization 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 memorize 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.