Speak and Read Japanese: Fun Mnemonic Devices for Remembering Japanese Words and Their Meanings

by Larry Herzberg

Modeled on the same winning format as his Speak and Read Chinese , teacher Larry Herzberg's latest book offers simple, fun, and imaginative ways to remember essential Japanese words and characters. Mastering basic vocabulary and kanji is one of the first challenges any Japanese learner faces. This book addresses this task head-on, complementing the content of all major Japanese textbooks and providing valuable tips to independent students. Includes three hundred essential words and kanji from the first two years of study, indexed for quick reference. Larry Herzberg has founded two Asian language programs and taught Japanese at the university level for thirty years.

Genres: Japanese Literature

128 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2017

About the author

Larry Herzberg studied Chinese for five years at Vanderbilt University before doing his Master's and Ph.D. work in Chinese Language and Literature at Indiana University. In 1980 he founded the Chinese Language Program at Albion College and then did the same at Calvin College in 1984. For the past three decades he has taught the Chinese language at the college level.

Reviews

[Ivy Reisner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had a lot of promise. It uses mnemonics, in the style of Remembering the Kanji , to help readers retain key vocabulary items. Only the memory aids in RTK are more tightly coupled. For example, he shows the radical for person and the radical for tree and has a person resting under a tree (the kanji is to rest). Here we're told to remember oi means nephew because Jews say "oy vey" about rambunctious nephews.

Here are a few notable ones.

"You take your medicine 'cause you're sick" (kusuri - medicine)
"You may have just been dreaming" (yume - dream)
"So sue me, but I want to spend time on my hobby" (shumi - hobby)
"Yeah, sue me, but I'm taking a break." (yasumi - rest)

The last two felt entirely too close, and there are many pair like that. I'm not sure reusing mnemonics is generally helpful like this. That said, these are exactly examples as given, so if this works for you as a memory trick, the rest of the book is the same and the selection is perfect.

Overall, it's a great concept, but the general tool has been covered to death and the specific examples here aren't particularly helpful. It's best asset is as a guide to the most common words you'll encounter in first or second year Japanese class, with both word and kanji combined. That is helpful, and I'd love to see him do a JLPT level by level guide like that.

I received a review copy of this book.

[Harrison Large ラージ • ハリソン · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like this one at all. The examples were not particularly helpful, and neither was the formatting. Macrons (the lines over vowels) are far more useful that doubling up oos or uus for clarity sake.

It didn't help that many examples were almost tertiary in pronunciation. I'm suppose to remember person (kata) with the mnemonic "the jazz musician introduced me to his drummer by saying this cat is the person who keeps the beat in the band".

The only reason I give two stars is because as a resource I will come back to it and the 300 or so words compiled are intended to be the most useful ones. But I wouldn't recommend it.