Essential Kanji : 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged For Learning And Reference

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Summary: What Every Kanji Learner Needs
Review: A few months ago, I spoke with an Ivy League student who had gone to Japan a year before knowing no Japanese and came out fluent in spoken and written Japanese. When I asked how he learned all the Kanji in such an apparently efficient and effective manner, he pulled out this book and lauded it to the skies. You want this book. I am currently learning Japanese, so I know how all you Kanji learners feel. Whether you like learning Kanji or not (personally, I do), this book is probably perfect for your needs. This is true quite simply because this book has everything. It lists 2000 Kanji that it deems "essential," which are roughly the same Kanji as the Joyo Kanji that the Japanese Ministry of Education has deemed "essential" for reading Japanese (although this book was roughly based on the earlier Toyo Kanji set, from which the Joyo Kanji set was developed). Each Kanji is written in beautiful calligraphy and in what appears to be ballpoint pen, which shows one the beauty of each character while showing how the non-calligraphers of us should draw each Kanji. Stroke order is included, which is a MUST for learning Kanji. The On and Kun (compound/solitary or Chinese/native pronounciations, roughly) pronounciations are included (with all relvant pronounciations), words using the Kanji in question are listed, the English meanings of the Kanji for each reading are given, and the modern Chinese pronounciation and a mneumonic aid for many Kanji are also given. Superb. As if that was not enough, each Kanji only uses radicals and word examples covered in earlier Kanji, and each Kanji's secion could be conveniently cut out to make a great set of flash cards. Indecies of Kanji by reading, stroke number, and English meaning (for radicals, at least) are given, and they are GREAT. The introduction is also informative and interesting. The only book I've seen that can compare to this book is Halpern's Kanji Learner Dictionary, but both books have their advantages and disadvantages- while Halpern's book is more comprehensive, the order in which Kanji are presented seems to make it more of a reference work than a learner's book. This book cannot hurt you and is most definitely worth the money. I cannot vouch for its long-term effectiveness (yet), but it's working just fine now and I think I'll be able to in the future.

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Summary: Interesting, but has some index problems
Review: First let me say I am not studying Japanese. I study writing systems and letterforms and I bought this book because I wanted to see how the characters for various objects differed (like tree versus branch, and so on). For what I'm doing, I need to be able to look up a word in the index and then go to the page with the Kanji character. However, several things I tried to look up had the wrong page number referenced.

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Summary: 2000 Basic Japanese Characters
Review: I was amazed at this book and the ammount of effort P.G.O'Neil and everyone who helped him put into it! This book is very good for people who want to study Japanese Kanji, but you have to have a basic knowledge of the langauge first. Serching for Kanji won't help if you don't know the amount of strokes in a ideogram. If you are for example reading a manga, and you have the kanji in front of you then this book can be helpful. It even gives you tips to remember the ideogram, which I find very helpful. Each kanji is written in 3 different ways, to give you a better feel of how to write it. It's written with the computer, with a ball pen and with a typical Japanese brush. Thats about all I have to say. Ok, I hope that was helpful. :-)

Rating:
Summary: Great reference
Review: I wouldn't recommend this as a mnemonic/in-depth study of kanji-- rather I've found it useful for quick lookup of stroke order, meaning, and how to read the characters. The print might be a bit small for some people (especially when you're trying to read the stroke order numbers!), but overall a great little reference book.

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Summary: If you only own one Japanese book, this should be it!
Review: I've been teaching myself Japanese for several years and I own an entire bookcase full of different Japanese study books. If I had to, I'd trade them all just keep my essential kanji book. I love this book so much, everytime I see it in a book store I want to buy it again (I ended up buying a copy for a friend of mine). The kanji are arranged in a fashion that allows you to easily understand the meanings of radicals and their combination meanings. Every kanji has 3 compound examples for it and has explainations about the radical placement to help you remember meaning. I have a couple extensive Kanji dictionaries, but I prefer to use my Essential Kanji book to look up kanji b/c of it's various and well arranged indexes. Although I translate manga in my free time, I've yet to find a kanji that wasn't contained in this book. This book is excellent for people who want to teach themselves kanji or for use as a reference dictionary.

Rating:
Summary: If you only own one Japanese book, this should be it!
Review: I've been teaching myself Japanese for several years and I own an entire bookcase full of different Japanese study books. If I had to, I'd trade them all just keep my essential kanji book. I love this book so much, everytime I see it in a book store I want to buy it again (I ended up buying a copy for a friend of mine). The kanji are arranged in a fashion that allows you to easily understand the meanings of radicals and their combination meanings. Every kanji has 3 compound examples for it and has explainations about the radical placement to help you remember meaning. I have a couple extensive Kanji dictionaries, but I prefer to use my Essential Kanji book to look up kanji b/c of it's various and well arranged indexes. Although I translate manga in my free time, I've yet to find a kanji that wasn't contained in this book. This book is excellent for people who want to teach themselves kanji or for use as a reference dictionary.

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Summary: BEST learning method for SERIOUS kanji learners
Review: If you are a serious kanji learner, meaning you want to know all the 2000 standard kanji and not just +- 200 for travelling purposes, you need this book.
Admitted, learning Kanji is a lot of work, but this book sure does help a lot. All the other reviewers summarised the good points of the book, but the one thing I'd like to point out is the fact that in the examples it uses only the kanji the learner already encounterd. This makes it a better book than Kodansha's. True, Kodansha gives a lot more examples for every kanji, but you don't remember a single one of them if they consist of 3 kanji you didn't learn yet. I'd say, teach yourself all 2000 kanji with this book, then go buy Kodansha for the extensive amount of examples they offer.
Daniël, The Netherlands

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Summary: So easy to use!
Review: Makes finding kanji a snap. Couldn't be happier.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This is a wonderful book; I couldn't be happier with it. I've got the "Yookoso! A Guide to Contemporary Japanese"'s workbook (it's for my Japanese class), but I prefer this book much more. It not only enables you to learn the Kanji, but it even has a section at the front giving you instructions on how to test yourself; how to cut an index card so you can test yourself on either writing the character itself, it's on/kun readings, it's meanings, etc. The characters are written in awesome calligraphy in both brush and pen; all this said, I love it ^_^.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This is a wonderful book; I couldn't be happier with it. I've got the "Yookoso! A Guide to Contemporary Japanese"'s workbook (it's for my Japanese class), but I prefer this book much more. It not only enables you to learn the Kanji, but it even has a section at the front giving you instructions on how to test yourself; how to cut an index card so you can test yourself on either writing the character itself, it's on/kun readings, it's meanings, etc. The characters are written in awesome calligraphy in both brush and pen; all this said, I love it ^_^.