Remembering the kanji / James W. Heisig.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Heisig, James W., 1944-

Language:

English

Japanese

Subjects (All):

Japanese language--Orthography and spelling--Textbooks.

Japanese language.

Chinese characters--Japan--Textbooks.

Chinese characters.

Japanese language--Textbooks for foreign speakers--English.

Japanese language--Textbooks for foreign speakers.

Japanese language--Orthography and spelling.

Japan.

Genre:

Textbooks.

Physical Description:

volumes ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, c2011-

Summary:

Following the first volume of Remembering the Kanji, the present work provides students with helpful tools for learning the pronunciation of the kanji. Behind the notorious inconsistencies in the way the Japanese language has come to pronounce the characters it received from China lie several coherent patterns. Identifying these patterns and arranging them in logical order can reduce dramatically the amount of time spent in the brute memorization of sounds unrelated to written forms.

Many of the "Primitive elements," or building blocks, used in the drawing of the characters also serve to indicate the "Chinese reading" that particular kanji use, chiefly in compound terms. By learning one of the kanji that uses such a "signal primitive," one can learn the entire group at the same time. In this way, Remembering the Kanji 2 lays out the varieties of phonetic pattern and offers helpful hints for learning readings, that might otherwise appear completely random, in an efficient and rational way. Individual frames cross-reference the kanji to alternate readings and to the frame in volume 1 in which the meaning and writing of the kanji was first introduced.

A parallel system of pronouncing the kanji, their "Japanese readings," uses native Japanese words assigned to particular Chinese characters. Although these are more easily learned because of the association of the meaning to a single world, the author creates a kind of phonetic alphabet of single-syllable words, each connected to a simple Japanese word, and shows how they can be combined to help memorize particularly troublesome vocabulary.

The 4th edition has been updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the government in 2010 as "general-use" kanji. Book jacket.

Contents:

v. 1. A complete course on how not to forget the meaning and writing of Japanese characters.

v. 2. A systematic guide to reading the Japanese characters.

v. 3. Writing and reading Japanese characters for upper-level proficiency / James W. Heisig and Tanya Sienko.

Notes:

Includes various editions.

Includes indexes.

v. 1. A complete course on how not to forget the meaning and writing of Japanese characters. -- v. 2. A systematic guide to reading the Japanese characters. -- v. 3. Writing and reading Japanese characters for upper-level proficiency / James W. Heisig and Tanya Sienko.

ISBN:

9780824835927

0824835921

9780824836696

0824836693

9780824837020

0824837029

OCLC:

808123026