Kenneth G. Henshall – författare

Master Hiragana & Katakana — The Essential Japanese Writing Workbook!Whether you're planning a trip to Japan, diving into anime and manga, or starting your language journey, this bestselling, beginner-friendly workbook makes learning the Japanese alphabet simple, fun, and effective. With clear stroke-by-stroke guides, real vocabulary, and tons of practice, you'll quickly build confidence reading and writing Hiragana and Katakana.Perfect for travelers, students, and anime fans — no prior experience needed!Step-by-step lessons for all 92 kana charactersStroke order charts & writing practice sheetsOnline audio for perfect pronunciationQuizzes, flash cards, and vocabulary examplesIdeal for self-study, class use, or JLPT prepUnlike dense textbooks or distracting apps, this workbook keeps it simple and hands-on. You'll build muscle memory through writing and start recognizing kana in the wild, from signs and menus to subtitles and conversations. By the end you'll be reading and writing basic Japanese with confidence — and ready to take on the next level (Kanji and beyond)!

Learning Hiragana and Katakana is a systematic and comprehensive Japanese workbook that is perfect for self-study or use in a classroom setting. Written Japanese combines three different types of characters: the Chinese characters known as kanji, and two Japanese sets of phonetic letters, hiragana and katakana, known collectively as kana, that must be mastered before the Japanese kanji can be learned. Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana provides beginning-level students of Japanese a thorough grounding in the basic hiragana and katakana phonetic symbols or syllabaries. A comprehensive introduction presents their primary function, origin, pronunciation and usage. The main body of the book is devoted to presenting the 92 hira and kata characters along with their variations, giving step-by-step guidelines on how to write each character neatly in the correct stroke order, with generous practice spaces provided for handwriting practice. This Japanese workbook includes: Systematic and comprehensive coverage of the two Japanese kana systems. Ample provision for Japanese kana practice, review, and self-testing at several levelsDetailed reference section explaining the origin and function of kana, and the various kana combinations. Access to online Japanese audio files to aid in correct pronunciation. Helpful additional information for language students accustomed to romanized Japanese. Vocabulary selected for usefulness and cultural relevance.About this new edition: The new third edition has been expanded and revised to include many additional reading and writing exercises. Accompanying online recordings demonstrate the correct pronunciation of all the characters, vocabulary, and sentences in the book.

This is a concise and user–friendly introduction to the Japanese language.Japanese has too often been treated by Westerners as an exotic curiosity, but the reality is that it is a functional language spoken as a mother tongue by more than 125 million people, and ranks as the ninth most spoken language in the world. In the present global age, an age characterized by a vast range of Japanese products including electronic games and anime, more and more Westerners are in one way or another interacting with Japan and Japanese people. But it is nonetheless fair to say that the language, while increasing in popularity as a subject of study, is still not as widely spoken among non–Japanese as we might expect.In this book we would therefore like to "demistify" Japanese, to show how the language is formed and used, and to encourage you to pursue the study of it. Of course it has its challenges, especially with regards to the writing system, but we try to put these in a balanced context. And we like to think that, by describing the various facets of the Japanese language to you, we thereby empower you with a degree of knowledge and familiarity.

Learn over 2,000 Japanese Kanji characters with this user-friendly Japanese language-learning book. This unique Kanji study guide provides a comprehensive introduction to all the Kanji characters on the Japanese Ministry of Education''s official Joyo ("General Use") list—providing detailed notes on the historical development of each character as well as all information needed by students to read and write them. As fascinating as it is useful, this is the book every Japanese language learners keeps on his or her desk and visits over and over. This Kanji book includes: Clear, large-sized entries All of the General Use Joyo Kanji Characters Japanese readings and English meanings stroke-count stroke order usage examples mnemonic hints for easy memorization The components which make up each character are detailed, and the Kanji are graded in difficulty according to Ministry of Education guidelines, allowing students to prioritize the order in which the Kanji are learned and track their progress. This book is essential to anyone who is planning to take the official Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) and will appeal to beginning students as well as those who wish to attain higher-level mastery of the Japanese language. It is the only book that also provides historical and etymological information about the Japanese Kanji. This latest edition has been updated to include all of the 2,136 Kanji on the expanded Joyo list issued by the Japanese government in 2010. Many entries have been revised to include the most recent research on character etymologies.