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Title: Remembering the Kanji: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters by James W. Heisig ISBN: 4-88996-075-9 Publisher: Japan Publications Trading Company Pub. Date: August, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $42.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.71 (28 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: effective, productive, and very true to its title
Comment: Having used a number of texts over the years, I found this one to be the best for what it's title describes. It is excellent for learning the meanings and writings of the kanji.
It is written in a very down to earth style and makes learning the kanji fun. It quickly gives access to a large number of kanji. Its system is quite simple and before you know it, you have learned 2000 kanji. If I had used this book alongside my first conversation and reading texts, it would have accelerated the entire process of learning to recognize, read, and write kanji.
Although it doesn't help one to learn the pronunciation of the kanji or to read compound words, it doesn't claim to do so. After reading this text I found it extremely easy to recall the kanji and put them on paper. So if your goal is_only_reading, then this might not be the book for you. If you intend on improving your overall kanji power, and speeding your progress in kanji, it is very helpful.
I don't believe there is one book for everyone and I would not recommend using only this book. Instead, it is an excellent companion to your regular studies. Consider it a multiplier or an enhancer, for it is highly valuable on those terms.
I would recommend it to any Western student of the Japanese language.
Rating: 2
Summary: Slow way to reading comprehension
Comment: Before you consider using this book, you need to think about why you are learning kanji in the first place. If you're like most learners, you eventually want to learn to read Japanese. The kanji themselves are not useful, they are merely a tool that you will use to read the Japanese words. In my mind, the major failing of this series is an overemphasis on individual kanji and underemphasis on compounds and reading practice.
If someone wanted to learn English, would you give them a list of the 2000 most common words and tell them to memorize each one starting from 1 until you hit 2000? I don't think so, yet that is exactly what Heisig wants you to do with this book. You cannot even begin to try reading any Japanese until you finish the entire 1st book and much of the 2nd. You must wade through a number of obscure kanji to find the common ones.
Another cornerstone of his system is that you must learn 2000 kanji before any of them are of use (he says this explicitly in his introduction). Frequency counts show that the 500 most common kanji account for 80% of the kanji appearing in newspapers, and 94% can be covered by 1000. These numbers do not hold true for all Japanese writing, but they do show Heisig's claim to be suspect. However, to put this into practice it's not enough to simply know the readings of the kanji and how to write it by hand. You must also know the words that are formed from those kanji. In volume 2, Heisig introduces 1-2 compounds per kanji, as opposed to other books like Kanji in Context which introduce sometimes as many as 15 compounds for one kanji. Anyone who has reached an intermediate or advanced level of Japanese knows that you can make a good attempt at reading actual Japanese even with only 800-1000 kanji, provided you know many compounds for those words and have a good grammatical background.
His idea of breaking down the kanji into component parts is a good one, but you do not need his book to do that -- you can break the kanji down yourself.
Also, the goal of this book (learning to write the kanji by hand) is questionable. As Heisig himself says in the introduction, many native Japanese speakers cannot write all the kanji by hand. Why should a beginning learner spend a lot of time learning to do something that even educated Japanese are unable to do? With the advent of word processors, the ability to write kanji by hand is not as useful as it once was.
My advice is to only use this book as a last resort -- if you are absolutely unable to learn kanji by any other method. Too many people, however, spend their time flipping through kanji flash cards and then lament that they are unable to learn the characters. What you need to try is a book that integrates reading practice with learning the kanji -- something like Basic Kanji Book, Kanji in Context, or Japanese: The Written Language.
-Chris
Rating: 5
Summary: really useful
Comment: For me, the best is studying the basics with JAPANESE IN MANGALAND, practicing writing and so with some good workbook, and learning kanji with REMEMBERING THE KANJI.
This book is not for learning japanese, as other have said in their reviews, but fot learning japanese kanji only, so it is normal not being able to read japanese only by studying this book. And it is true that constance is needed. But it is impossible to read japanese without knowing kanji, and it is very difficult to learn kanji with a normal textbook. I kept forgetting strokes and stroke orders, and the reason for it was that I didn't see kanji like a logic system, but more like a more or less difficult drawing. There are many kanji that look nearly the same, but once you study this book, these small differences become impossible to mistake.
I am studying this book in spanish, but I've seen in english it's just the same, that's why I am reviewing this kanji study book. :) it has helped me so much...
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Title: Remembering the Kanji II: A Systematic Guide to Reading Japanese Characters by James W. Heisig ISBN: 0870407481 Publisher: Japan Publications Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $37.00 |
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Title: Remembering the Kana: The Hiragana by James W. Heisig, Helmut Morsbach, Kazue Kurebayashi, Kazue Kurebayashe ISBN: 4889960724 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Remembering the Kanji III: Writing and Reading Japanese Characters for Upper-Level Proficiency by James W. Heisig, Tanya Sienko ISBN: 087040931X Publisher: Japan Publications Pub. Date: November, 1994 List Price(USD): $38.00 |
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Title: All About Particles: A Handbook of Japanese Function Words by Naoko Chino ISBN: 4770027818 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary: Japanese-English English-Japanese by Kodansha ISBN: 4770024800 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
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