Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

Books

An Updated Version of an Oldie But Goodie

4-5 Japanese, Books

Published just today, this McGraw-Hill book is a slightly updated version of Easy Kana Workbook, also published by McGraw-Hill all the way back in 1991. I liked that one, so I like this one, too.  One observation: McGraw-Hill…

I Like This Book

4-5 Japanese, Books, Kids

This book is a lot of fun. It teaches you to write all the characters in the two Japanese syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, which are collectively referred to as kana. The kana, 92 of them in total, are basic elements…

Master the Basics of Japanese with These Useful, Clear Explanations

4 Japanese, Books

Master the Basics: Japanese by Nobuo Akiyama and Carol Akiyama begins with a multi-page diagnostic test to see how much you know. Since I personally knew nothing when I opened the book, I was a bit thrown…

Kana de Manga: I Think This Is A Kids' Book, But I Didn't Mind

3 Japanese, Books, Kids

Japanese has a complicated writing system combining two syllabaries (hiragana and katakana), as well as thousands of Chinese characters called kanji. A syllabary is different from an alphabet in the sense that each syllabary symbol represents a syllable (such as …

Read & Speak Japanese for Beginners: I Did Not Find This Book Usable

1 Japanese, Books, Multimedia

I found Read & Speak Japanese for Beginners by Helen Bagley just impossible given the challenges of the Japanese writing system. On principle, the books in this Read & Speak series—which are offered across multiple…

© 2009–2022 Ellen Jovin. All rights reserved.