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Preface

It is widely accepted that students of Japanese progress more quickly if they learn the written component of the language at an early stage of their studies. Unfortunately, many students are daunted by the task of learning a large number of seemingly complex characters.

The complexity of Japanese characters, however, is something of an illusion, for many of the characters are merely combinations of comparatively few elements. This fact becomes apparent as one progresses through the two forty-eight character syllabaries, known collectively as kana, and the two thousand or so kanji characters that are used in written Japanese today.

Anybody who is able to master English, with its irregular spellings and idiosyncratic pronunciations, is more than equipped to master written Japanese.

The hiragana and katakana syllabaries are purely phonetic characters, which function much like the letters of the English alphabet. In this respect, kana are quite different from kanji characters, which are based on Chinese ideographs and which represent ideas.

The katakana syllabary is used primarily to represent borrowed words (from languages other than Chinese), although it is also used for botanical names and is sometimes used in place of hiragana or kanji for emphasis. In some ways, the use of katakana in Japanese parallels the use of italics in English. Onomatopoeic words and other expressive terms are also generally written in katakana, although hiragana can also be used.

As katakana is used to write foreign words that often contain sounds not found in Japanese, katakana has a number of apparent irregularities. Instead of providing a detailed description of the irregularities, this book adopts the approach of simply noting the irregularities as they occur and allowing the student to become familiar with the use of katakana through the numerous practice examples.

Each of the hiragana and katakana syllabaries represents all of the sounds in spoken Japanese. Unlike kanji, which can take on a variety of pronunciations according to their context, the pronunciation of the kana characters is quite regular. Although it is possible to write Japanese using only katakana, a native Japanese speaker would find it somewhat difficult to understand. Kanji are used for clarity, eloquence, and immediacy of meaning. It is customary for the student to write using only the kana at first, then to substitute kanji into their writing as the kanji are learned. Katakana, however, continue to be used when writing words of a foreign origin.

Japanese schoolchildren learn their characters by writing them out, and this is generally acknowledged as the fastest way to master them.

This book has been prepared so that students at the introductory level of Japanese can become acquainted with the written component of the language in the quickest possible way. The overriding priority has been given to active student involvement, with a variety of practice sentences and expressions provided to reinforce the characters learnt at each stage of progress. The book also features grayed-out, trace-over characters to enable the student to gain the correct feel and balance of each character.

This book uses the Hepburn system of romanization. It is important to remember, however, that Japanese is a separate language with an independent set of sounds to English, and hence, any attempt to romanize it can only be an approximation.