*Speak Japanese (Book 1): A Textbook For Young Students
*Japanese Step by Step : An Innovative Approach to Speaking and Reading Japanese
*Japanese Made Easy: Revised Edition
*Let’s Learn Hiragana: First Book of Basic Japanese Writing (Kodansha’s Children’s Classics
*Guide to Reading & Writing Japanese: Third Edition
*Read and Speak Japanese for Beginners
*Japanese for Dummies AUDIO+CD (
if none of these are good do have any suggestions i am a begginer and speak english also any good work books and where i can find the books and workbooks and about how much any of ur suggestions cost
Most japanese students always recommend Genki textbooks. They don’t have it in stock at amazon, but you can buy it from jbox.com.
Also another good book is "Japanese for Busy People *kana version" (In my opinion). It even includes an audio CD ^^
*The books I mentioned are written in kana, so to understand them you should first learn the 2 kana alphabets (hiragana & katakana) they are not hard to learn, you just need the 3 D’s desire, dedication & determination. It normally takes about a week or less (if you work hard)
My advice is to stay AWAY from books written in romaji (unless you only want to speak and not write japanese) because they just make you believe that you’re learning the language while you’re only learning half of it (spoken), then when you have a direct approach with the language you will end up feeling frustrated and that you have lost your time with romaji when you could’ve been a step closer starting off with kana.
So, that being said…
From those books you mentioned:
*Japanese Made Easy: I bought it when I started and later regretted it, it’s all in romaji.
*Japanese for Dummies Audio & CD is alright I guess, but the pamphlet that comes with the CD is in romaji, overall it is a good approach to spoken japanese (even though sometimes they pronounce things way too slow, as if you were retarded)
*Guide to reading and writing japanese: I love that book, BUT! It’s a kanji dictionary, you should try it when you’ve already mastered the kana and want to learn how to write kanji.
The other books, I woulnd’t know since I haven’t tried them.
Try getting a dictionary, like Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary, they use romaji & kanji.
Good luck with your japanese learning, Hope this helps ^_^ ~~~!
March 6th, 2010 at 4:44 am
Most japanese students always recommend Genki textbooks. They don’t have it in stock at amazon, but you can buy it from jbox.com.
Also another good book is "Japanese for Busy People *kana version" (In my opinion). It even includes an audio CD ^^
*The books I mentioned are written in kana, so to understand them you should first learn the 2 kana alphabets (hiragana & katakana) they are not hard to learn, you just need the 3 D’s desire, dedication & determination. It normally takes about a week or less (if you work hard)
My advice is to stay AWAY from books written in romaji (unless you only want to speak and not write japanese) because they just make you believe that you’re learning the language while you’re only learning half of it (spoken), then when you have a direct approach with the language you will end up feeling frustrated and that you have lost your time with romaji when you could’ve been a step closer starting off with kana.
So, that being said…
From those books you mentioned:
*Japanese Made Easy: I bought it when I started and later regretted it, it’s all in romaji.
*Japanese for Dummies Audio & CD is alright I guess, but the pamphlet that comes with the CD is in romaji, overall it is a good approach to spoken japanese (even though sometimes they pronounce things way too slow, as if you were retarded)
*Guide to reading and writing japanese: I love that book, BUT! It’s a kanji dictionary, you should try it when you’ve already mastered the kana and want to learn how to write kanji.
The other books, I woulnd’t know since I haven’t tried them.
Try getting a dictionary, like Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary, they use romaji & kanji.
Good luck with your japanese learning, Hope this helps ^_^ ~~~!
References :
March 6th, 2010 at 5:02 am
None. Don’t waste your time with any of these textbooks to learn Japanese.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ – is by far the best "textbook" out there for Japanese grammar, and goes further in explaining than any other textbook I’ve ever seen.
Use these resources too:
http://web.mit.edu/21f.500/www/vocab-photo/index2.html – go to "MIT JP Courses, then click on "Japanese 1" (if you’re a beginner, that is).
http://buna.yorku.ca/japanese/jp1000.html – the entry course Japanese taught at York University.
Use http://jisho.org as a English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary, and to look up kanji.
Then go to the iTunes store and search for podcasts teaching Japanese. The key to learning a language is to hear natives speak it.
The best part about all of this…? It’s all FREE.
References :