Japanese: Books

Posted by niaskywalk on Dec 28, 2009 in Books, Media |

I was going through some notes and thought I would take the time to note the books I have bought to learn Japanese over the last couple years. My official Japanese school books at the point are the Minna no Nihongo series released by 3A Corporation, but they aren’t the only books helping me to learn:

Writing Hiragana: An Introductory Japanese Language Workbook by Jim Gleeson (Tuttle) ~ Excellent for repetition of the Hiragana plus some words, sentences and phrases.

Writing Katakana: An Introductory Japanese Language Workbook by Jim Gleeson (Tuttle) ~ Katakana is the script used for foreign words and emphasis. This is also a great book for repetition of the characters. Plus words, phrases and locations.

The First 100 Japanese Kanji: The quick and easy way to learn the basic Japanese Kanji by Eriko Sato Ph.D. (Tuttle) ~ I am currently using this to supplement the assigned Kanji in class. This is not as great as the kana books, but still awesome for the repetitiveness.

Minna no Nihongo book 1 (3A Corporation) ~ School Books, very conversational, some translations leave a little to be desired, but overall a fun and informative series in the classroom.

Minna no Nihongo book 2 (3A Corporation) ~ School Books, see above.

Write Now! Kanji for Beginners (3A Corporation) ~ From the company the does my schoolbooks. It doesn’t coincide with the lessons, but it is a nice book. It lists a certain amount of kanji in each lesson and by the end of the chapter you are that many more kanji richer in knowledge. As the name suggests, it gets you writing and reading kanji immediately.

Kana de Manga by Glenn Kardy and Chihiro Hattori (Manga University) ~ a simple book, fun, but essentially I found it useless. The book comes with the kana, Hiragana on one page, Katakana for the same sound on the other, a little bit of information and a pronounciation guide plus a few squares for practice. the back of the small book has more blank pages. For someone who learns well and quickly this is great, for me not so much.

Kanji de Manga vol. 1 by Glenn Kardy and Chihiro Hattori (Manga University) ~ I like the book, it has some cute scenes and explanations in it, but until I was actually taking a class, listening to a podcast and playing a video game all teaching me, I couldn’t understand what it was telling me. Again if you learn quickly and well, a quick explanation that is not in the book would make this series awesome for you.