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A Guide to Learning Hiragana & Katakana
NO WRITING OR MARKS INTERIOR PAGES. CLEAN PAGES. SPANISH VERSION. NON REFUNDABLE.
120 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 1990
6 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth G. Henshall
20 books17 followersKenneth G. Henshall is a graduate of the universities of London (B.A.), Sydney (PhD), and Adelaide (Dip. Ed.), and is now a professor of Japanese at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He has also taught at the universities of Auckland, Western Australia, California and Waikato. He is well-known for his translations of literature and history books, and is the author of A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 2, 2022
Usage notes up front, party in the back. Which is to say it gives you most of the information you need in order to write and use kana before it teaches you how to actually write any kana, which might be daunting for some. Plus by the time you get to long vowels or the tiny tsu if you don't already know what you're doing, you might have to flip back and reread that part. Or you could just skip the intro and do the exercises and then return to the intro when you hit something you don't understand, but that might cause issues because you don't know what you don't know. So it might not be the best book for a beginner, but it is good for a review, which is what I used it for.
The exercises are all of the same kind where they give you the romanization of a Japanese term and then have you write it in hiragana or katakana. Below it are little boxes, the first ones are filled with the answer and the rest are for you to practice in. You can cover the side with the answers if you want to quiz yourself, which I appreciated. A review section in back offers different exercises to test your skills with writing, correcting, and identifying hiragana and katakana, with answers at the end.
This doesn't cover writing the e, o, and wa particles in hiragana, and only covers the basic yōon for katakana, completely ignoring the existence of the expanded syllables used in foreign words. And while the authors explain their intention of exposing the reader to Japanese culture through Japanese vocabulary, in practice this means it's using words like geisha, yakuza, harakiri, and kamikaze without providing any context. A decision I found questionable.
Gives the origins of each character, shows how it was simplified into kana, gives a stroke-by-stroke guide of how to write each, and offers pronunciation tips. A very basic introduction to kana.
The exercises are all of the same kind where they give you the romanization of a Japanese term and then have you write it in hiragana or katakana. Below it are little boxes, the first ones are filled with the answer and the rest are for you to practice in. You can cover the side with the answers if you want to quiz yourself, which I appreciated. A review section in back offers different exercises to test your skills with writing, correcting, and identifying hiragana and katakana, with answers at the end.
This doesn't cover writing the e, o, and wa particles in hiragana, and only covers the basic yōon for katakana, completely ignoring the existence of the expanded syllables used in foreign words. And while the authors explain their intention of exposing the reader to Japanese culture through Japanese vocabulary, in practice this means it's using words like geisha, yakuza, harakiri, and kamikaze without providing any context. A decision I found questionable.
Gives the origins of each character, shows how it was simplified into kana, gives a stroke-by-stroke guide of how to write each, and offers pronunciation tips. A very basic introduction to kana.
October 25, 2017
الكتاب ممتاز لهدفه وهو استعراض حروف الكانا بقسميها مع بعض التمارين وكثير من الأمثلة، جميل جداً وممتاز جداً، حفظتها كاملة خلال شهر 92 حرف بالإضافة لفروعها
February 14, 2018
Great book, my first one in the path of learning Japanese, I wanted to learn the small stuff first before jumping into harder things. One book at a time plus studying and trying to read manga (while trying to watch anime and movies) may teach me Japanese, though I don't have any other book to compare.
December 19, 2023
Rated in the search for good introductory materials to recommend to others who are just beginning. This book is simply not as good as other resources for this purpose, however, it is perfectly adequate, though it covers no rudimentary phonetics/phonology that it might make sense to cover in introducing kana.
PS. would a half star be too much to ask for?
PS. would a half star be too much to ask for?
October 3, 2022
Interesting book
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews