Following on the phenomenal success of Remembering the Kanji, the author has prepared a companion volume for learning the Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries of modern Japanese. In six short lessons of about twenty minutes, each of the two systems of "kana" writing are introduced in such a way that the absolute beginner can acquire fluency in writing in a fraction of the time normally devoted to the task. Using the same basic self-taught method devised for learning the kanji, and in collaboration with Helmut Morsbach and Kazue Kurebayashi, the author breaks the shapes of the two syllabaries into their component parts and draws on what he calls "imaginative memory" to aid the student in reassembling them into images that fix the sound of each particular kana to its writing. Now in its third edition, Remembering the Kana has helped tens of thousands of students of Japanese master the Hiragana and Katakana in a short amount of time . . . and have fun in the process.

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

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 word, 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.

Volume 2 (4th ed.) updated to include the 196 kanja approved in 2010 for general use.

This highly-visual book introduces an effective new method to learn over 1,000 Japanese kanji characters using visual stimuli and pictographs. Learning the fundamental kanji characters used to write Japanese can be challenging, but this book is designed to speed up learning by presenting the 1,000 most common characters using a mnemonic approach. In a fun and accessible way to learn Japanese, each kanji is associated with memorable visual and verbal clues. For example, the Japanese character for person is superimposed over a sketch of a smiling man. The visual clue is "a person standing on two legs." By seeing the distinctive shape of the kanji, learners create a mental image of its meaning. Each character is presented as part of a group of characters which share similar traits. These groups use common root symbols known as radicals; they are also categorized by themes such as colors, numbers, animals, or body parts. Pronunciations, meanings and common vocabulary compounds are provided for each character in the group. Mnemonic clues are also given for the basic 92 hiragana and katakana phonetic symbols. The free audio download available online helps you learn pronunciation for all of the characters and vocabulary in this book. The introduction explains the basic history and structure of the kanji. Key feature of this Japanese kanji book include: Hiragana and katakana phonetic symbols Easy-to-remember drawings and stories for ALL characters Thousands of vocabulary words Online audio for pronunciation practice All audio content is accessible on tuttlepublishing.com/downloadable-content.

At long last the approach that has helped thousands of learners memorize Japanese kanji has been adapted to help students with Chinese characters. Book 1 of Remembering Simplified Hanzi covers the writing and meaning of the 1,000 most commonly used characters in the simplified Chinese writing system, plus another 500 that are best learned at an early stage. (Book 2 adds another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000.) Of critical importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memorization. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters, which can, in turn, serve as parts of more complicated characters and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process. Guidance and detailed instructions are provided along the way. Students are taught to employ "imaginative memory" to associate each character’s component parts, or "primitive elements," with one another and with a key word that has been carefully selected to represent an important meaning of the character. This is accomplished through the creation of a "story" that engagingly ties the primitive elements and key word together. In this way, the collections of dots, strokes, and components that make up the characters are associated in memorable fashion, dramatically shortening the time required for learning and helping to prevent characters from slipping out of memory.