Postby Shumiston » September 25th, 2007 4:08 pm
Learning Hiragana and Katakana
This book was put together by Tetsuo Takagaki and Kenneth G. Henshall. It comes with Workbooks and practice sheets such as writing practice, writing words using kana, reviews, word searches do-it-yourself kana charts, pages in the back to practice writing, and even more. It was published by Tuttle Publishing which has some excellent books for learning japanese writing.
At the beginning of this book is a guide to this book and lots of information on kana and how to use it. Then you move on to the Hiragana section. There are 5 pages at the beginning of the Hiragana section. Each page has a picture of one Hiragana symbol, its stroke order, a verbal mnemonic, practice space, and even the origin from which the character came from! After the 5 pages comes a mini review. In the mini review it will give you japanese words made up of the sounds you just learned with a translation and a long space for you to keep writing the word. They sure give you lots of writing practice in the mini review. Once you finish writing practice and mini reviews there will be two pages of coiced and half-voiced sounds made up of hiragana. After that is a review of the voiced and half-voiced sounds. Following that is a review of double vowels and consonants. After that comes combined sounds practice, voice combined sounds practice, Half-voice combined sounds practice and one review for all three of those. Then comes a review through place names and period names. The to finish Hiragana comes the general review.
The Katakana section is the same exact thing as Hiragana except it is Katakana.
Now comes the Final Review. Here in the final review the first part is titled About Japan. In this exercise there are lines of kana written out in different boxes, it gives a space below the text to write what you see. Then comes the Food Items QuizOn the left side is the kana, to the righ of it is a line to write the appropriate romanization, and to the right of that is a translation. After that is the flora and fauna quiz. It is the same exact thing as the food items quiz, except you write the hiragana or katakana of the romanization to the left. There is a translation to the right of each word and An H for Hiragana or a K for Katakana next to the romanized word.
Next is the Personal names quiz where you underline the kana error and write the correct version in the blank. Hey! Heres the fun part a kana word search! After that are quiz answers (NO CHEATING). Then comes the do-it-yourself kana charts. The charts you fill out are the blank Basic kana symbols chart, the blank basic voiced sounds chart, the blank Basic combinations, and the blank voiced combination chart.
After all of that is a section on The Iroha verse. Finally there are several blank pages for you to practice writing on. This book has definitely helped me out in memorizing kana, and I know it will help you too if you need it
Email me with different things to help me with reading and writing. The language speaking is easy with me, but the Japanese writing system is hard for me.