Kana Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese Hiragana and Katakana

List Price: $6.00 Discount Price: $2.72

Customer Reviews:

Believe the hype- it's really a great little book. [Posted on 2008-06-10]
When I saw reviews for this book, I was worried that too many of the reviews sounded canned, but I thought for $6, there wasn't much to lose. After getting the book, I think all the enthusiasm might just be genuine. Please note- this is a *very* little book, as in measuring perhaps 5"x3", and consisting of 73 pages. This is beyond pocket-sized, it's micro. But for what you get, this book (er, "pocket guide" is more appropriate) easily qualifies as one of the best pound-for-pound deals in the industry.

Included are the full katakana and hiragana (absent are the kanji, but the author has a book just for that titled "Kanji Pict-o-Graphix"). The book opens with a short introduction and pronunciation guide to the romanization, and ends with a nice selection of useful topics in concise from, from voiced and unvoiced characters to combined forms and doublers. There are even quick-lookup indexes. There really is enough in here to read and (passably) pronounce these two alphabets. Note that a dictionary of actual meanings is absent, so you'll need to compliment this with other materials if you want to do more than meaninglessly sound out phrases.

The central gimmick of creating mnemonics to help you quickly memorize and retain the kana is absolutely praiseworthy. Each page has one sound / character, in its katakana and hiragana equivalents. You see the actual character, and the author's look-alike picture and sound-alike phrase. You can see this on the cover- the symbol Chi is presented by a figure cheering, and CHEer is your pronunciation clue. Some of the look-alikes are pretty far-fetched, but overall, it works. (Like the phrase for Mo is "Catch MO' fish with two worms", with an appropriate picture- I doubt I'll ever forget that one, which might be a good thing)

If you're looking for a quick and easy way to learn your katakana and hiragana, I've frankly never seen a better pocket guide than this. The best possible reason to get this volume is if you're already in a Japanese course (or have another book on learning the language) and your real trouble is just memorizing these alphabets. Most of the characters will instantly register with you, and retention is excellent. Understand that this book is what it is- a guide to memorizing the kana- and that it is no more and no less. If that's what you need, I highly recommend this product.

Wonderful Learning Tool ! [Posted on 2008-07-30]
Nice tiny little book. Take it anywhere. I found that it's a great way to remember how to pronounce the kana of the Japanese writing!

Not good, not bad. [Posted on 2008-10-20]
The idea and concept are great, but the delivery of the product isn't the best if you are intending to use this to help with studying. some of the images are a bit of a stretch, but other are excellent. There are some great tips at the end of the book as well as reference charts on the front and back covers. Worth it's price.

Excellent resource to learn both the of the Japanese scripts. [Posted on 2008-10-30]
This product is a really cute book to learn both Hiranga and Katakana. The memorization becomes a lot easier because of the mnemonic pictures. It's not a perfect book but it's pretty good.

Easy to undersand and learn [Posted on 2008-11-16]
I have all the books of this line cause I find so easy to understand and remember with the easy way that they teach it with the graphics and ideas.

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