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Guide to Writing Kanji & Kana #0
Japanese Kanji & Kana: A Complete Guide to the Japanese Writing System
This is a self-study book for learning Japanese Kanji and Kana
Long the leading book for learning Japanese Characters, Japanese Kanji and Kana is the resource you need to master the basic Japanese characters (kanji) and the hiragana and katakana syllabaries (known collectively as kana). This book features:
-All 2,136 official Joyo kanji with readings and meanings
-Up to 5 useful compounds for each kanji
-Brush and pen forms, too—not only printed form
-19 convenient tables summarizing key info about the language
-Easy access to all kanji via 3 indexes: by radical, stroke count, and readings
Complete, compact and essential, this is the resource you need in order to use and master kanji. This new edition reflects the recent update by the Japanese government of the official Joyo kanji list. Joyo means "daily use," and these 2,136 kanji are the ones that every Japanese person learns in public education. Japanese Kanji and Kana is perfect for the student who wants to get an A in Kanji and Kana class or for the more casual learner who has an interest in the Japanese Language. The kana and kanji are presented in an easy to understand format that will help you to learn Japanese quickly and retain what you have learned. A concise indexing section also allows the book to function as a Japanese dictionary and plenty of extra space is allowed for writing Kanji and writing Kana. All the characters are written clearly making reading kanji and reading kana effortless.
Long the leading book for learning Japanese Characters, Japanese Kanji and Kana is the resource you need to master the basic Japanese characters (kanji) and the hiragana and katakana syllabaries (known collectively as kana). This book features:
-All 2,136 official Joyo kanji with readings and meanings
-Up to 5 useful compounds for each kanji
-Brush and pen forms, too—not only printed form
-19 convenient tables summarizing key info about the language
-Easy access to all kanji via 3 indexes: by radical, stroke count, and readings
Complete, compact and essential, this is the resource you need in order to use and master kanji. This new edition reflects the recent update by the Japanese government of the official Joyo kanji list. Joyo means "daily use," and these 2,136 kanji are the ones that every Japanese person learns in public education. Japanese Kanji and Kana is perfect for the student who wants to get an A in Kanji and Kana class or for the more casual learner who has an interest in the Japanese Language. The kana and kanji are presented in an easy to understand format that will help you to learn Japanese quickly and retain what you have learned. A concise indexing section also allows the book to function as a Japanese dictionary and plenty of extra space is allowed for writing Kanji and writing Kana. All the characters are written clearly making reading kanji and reading kana effortless.
424 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
65 people are currently reading
238 people want to read
About the author
Wolfgang Hadamitzky
28 books2 followersWolfgang Hadamitzky is a freelance author of Japanese language learning materials. He has worked as a librarian on the staff of the East Asia Department of the Berlin State Library and of the German Cultural Institute (Goethe-Institute) in Tokyo. With Mark Spahn, he coauthored The Learner’s Japanese Kanji Dictionary, The Kanji Dictionary and A Guide to Writing Kanji & Kana Books 1 and 2.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 23, 2014
This is one of the best books to learn Kanji! All the important Kanji characters have been given in this book and is very easy to reference and search!
December 11, 2015
This book did an amazing job at explaining the history of Japanese characters and how they evolved from Chinese characters into the writing system they have today. The authors made a great choice at dividing this book into sections that each focus on a different aspect of the language. They worked to explain why Chinese characters evolved to better fit their spoken language, and this helps the reader to understand why Japanese and Chinese don't use the same writing system. This book is a good place to start for people who are looking to learn the Japanese language extensively but don't have an idea on where to start. Tips are given on what to study and in what order, and information is given to you on where you should continue learning after learning everything in the book. Also, the index of characters at the back of the book is a great resource that you can use when reading newspapers or articles and come across a complex character not supplemented with a pronunciation. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn basic characters of the Japanese language that are used a great majority of the time in Japanese articles or advertisements.
August 15, 2009
This book is fantastic for its study potential.
There are seven kanji per page with a large box showing each kanji and its stroke order. There is a smaller handwritten version as well.
Then there are several example compounds, *using only previously introduced kanji*. Thus if you work through the book you get a constant review.
Finally, this book will tell you what you need to know to read the jouyou kanji without overcomplicating things. Most readings and definitions only take up one line.
As a comprehensive kanji dictionary, I don't think that it's the best one (Kodansha for that), but it's my fave anyhow. Whatever rarer readings or meanings might have been left out, it was worth it for its conciseness.
There are seven kanji per page with a large box showing each kanji and its stroke order. There is a smaller handwritten version as well.
Then there are several example compounds, *using only previously introduced kanji*. Thus if you work through the book you get a constant review.
Finally, this book will tell you what you need to know to read the jouyou kanji without overcomplicating things. Most readings and definitions only take up one line.
As a comprehensive kanji dictionary, I don't think that it's the best one (Kodansha for that), but it's my fave anyhow. Whatever rarer readings or meanings might have been left out, it was worth it for its conciseness.
January 24, 2023
Covers the 1,945 officially recommended Jōyō Kanji from 1981, uses Hepburn transliteration, and offers brush, pen, and print forms for each kanji. Kanji are indexed by radical, stroke count, and reading.
Includes a helpful introduction to Japanese that covers the two main transliteration systems, the origins of kana, using the gojū-on zu to put words in dictionary order, kana orthography and usage, punctuation in vertical and horizontal writing, and a brief history of kanji as well as general guidelines on how to write them.
A compact little text, it served me well as the first Japanese reference book I ever bought.
Includes a helpful introduction to Japanese that covers the two main transliteration systems, the origins of kana, using the gojū-on zu to put words in dictionary order, kana orthography and usage, punctuation in vertical and horizontal writing, and a brief history of kanji as well as general guidelines on how to write them.
A compact little text, it served me well as the first Japanese reference book I ever bought.
October 1, 2014
Must-Have for Learning Japanese
"Japanese Kanji & Kana: A Complete Guide to the Japanese Writing System" by Wolfgang Hadamitzky and Mark Spahn is a must-have resource for anyone learning Japanese, because it is so versatile:
* get a detailed explanation of the Japanese writing system
* look up Kanji through a number of indexes
* learn Kanji in a logical order
In my opinion, the most important use of this book is for learning Kanji. As a student of Japanese who has mastered the Kana, you want to get started on the Kanji, but you want to learn them efficiently and without wasting time on Kanji like "convex" that you'll never need in real life.
What this book does, apart from the detailed description of the writing system itself and a few pages on the Kana, is present all 2000+ Jōyō Kanji in a logical order in which to learn them, going from simple to complex (e. g. 日 and 月 before 明) and from frequent to infrequent. This makes this book the ideal companion for your Japanese studies, better than "Remembering the Kanji" in my opinion, because you don't need to complete the whole book in order to learn the Kanji for lesson 1 of your textbook. The Kanji that come up early in textbooks will come up early in this book and the rare Kanji have been relegated to the back, where they belong. Even after you are proficient in Japanese, you won't want to chuck out this book, because it also makes for a great Kanji reference book, in which you can look up the characters you may have forgotten.
Each character is introduced with full info: stroke order, radical and composition, ON and KUN pronunciations along with different meanings that these imply (very useful for me!), as well as several example words or phrases that can be created with these Kanji. The examples have been carefully chosen so that they only use Kana or Kanji that were previously introduced, so that you don't need to jump around in the book.
All around a must-have for students of Japanese.
The only thing I would have improved is to strongly recommend the use of mnemonics (stories) in order to memorize the Kanji, especially for people who are not good at remembering pictures. Considering the size of the book, they could have afforded to give an example, for the un-initiated, of how one might memorize one of the more complex Kanji based on its component parts. Same for Kana: a hint for how to memorize these shapes would not have been amiss. However, I'm still giving the book 5 stars.
"Japanese Kanji & Kana: A Complete Guide to the Japanese Writing System" by Wolfgang Hadamitzky and Mark Spahn is a must-have resource for anyone learning Japanese, because it is so versatile:
* get a detailed explanation of the Japanese writing system
* look up Kanji through a number of indexes
* learn Kanji in a logical order
In my opinion, the most important use of this book is for learning Kanji. As a student of Japanese who has mastered the Kana, you want to get started on the Kanji, but you want to learn them efficiently and without wasting time on Kanji like "convex" that you'll never need in real life.
What this book does, apart from the detailed description of the writing system itself and a few pages on the Kana, is present all 2000+ Jōyō Kanji in a logical order in which to learn them, going from simple to complex (e. g. 日 and 月 before 明) and from frequent to infrequent. This makes this book the ideal companion for your Japanese studies, better than "Remembering the Kanji" in my opinion, because you don't need to complete the whole book in order to learn the Kanji for lesson 1 of your textbook. The Kanji that come up early in textbooks will come up early in this book and the rare Kanji have been relegated to the back, where they belong. Even after you are proficient in Japanese, you won't want to chuck out this book, because it also makes for a great Kanji reference book, in which you can look up the characters you may have forgotten.
Each character is introduced with full info: stroke order, radical and composition, ON and KUN pronunciations along with different meanings that these imply (very useful for me!), as well as several example words or phrases that can be created with these Kanji. The examples have been carefully chosen so that they only use Kana or Kanji that were previously introduced, so that you don't need to jump around in the book.
All around a must-have for students of Japanese.
The only thing I would have improved is to strongly recommend the use of mnemonics (stories) in order to memorize the Kanji, especially for people who are not good at remembering pictures. Considering the size of the book, they could have afforded to give an example, for the un-initiated, of how one might memorize one of the more complex Kanji based on its component parts. Same for Kana: a hint for how to memorize these shapes would not have been amiss. However, I'm still giving the book 5 stars.
May 1, 2015
An invaluable resource for any serious student of Japanese language. Organized slightly differently than a domestic Kanji dictionary by simplifying and combining some radicals, so changing to a Japanese published full dictionary is not completely alien, but also not quite the same. This contains only the "official" Jo-yo Kanji required by the education ministry, and Jin-mei characters commonly used in names, but not in literature. The large diagrams showing brush stroke direction and order are useful both as a way to accurately recreate the characters, not only with a brush, but also with pen or pencil too, and also serve as a useful mnemonic. There are a few characters out there that won't be found in this text, however, and the advent of portable dictionaries with touch-screen drawing input make this seem a bit cumbersome by comparison. As a learning tool it was a constant companion for more than ten years.
August 13, 2011
It's better to get a true kanji dictionary or a wordtank when you're on a more advanced level, but this is a great book for beginners in Japanese. It elaborates on the scripts and how they came into existence, the kana in general and how they're used, how you look up kanji, and everything else you need to know to get started. The only downside is that even though it refers to the 214 most commonly used radicals to look kanji up in a dictionary, it doesn't conform to those radicals itself, instead choosing a set of 79. It's easier when you're just getting started, but when you shift to actual kanji dictionaries, you need to learn a new system.
March 1, 2024
Amazing and comprehensive textbook/reference book for learning and looking up kanji. I’ll be bringing this with me with my current and near-future endeavors with kanji.
If you’re interested in linguistics, history and language learning - the book provides ample amounts of information for all writing systems in Japanese, with plenty of extra fun facts.
If you’re interested in linguistics, history and language learning - the book provides ample amounts of information for all writing systems in Japanese, with plenty of extra fun facts.
January 25, 2009
This one is essential for Japanese language study. If you don't have it, get it!
June 2, 2012
La miglior guida per imparare i kanji base.
December 13, 2013
Invaluable
Read
October 26, 2014this owesome
January 21, 2018
The bible for anyone studying the Japanese written language.
August 31, 2019
Well laid out and easy to follow. Will definitely help improve my Japanese reading and writing.
September 8, 2024
Good reference with several helpful indices.
September 19, 2007
my-books
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews