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Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged For Learning And Reference | 
 enlarge | Author: P. G. O'neill
Publisher: Weatherhill
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.24
You Save: $8.71 (44%)
New (34) Used (14) from $10.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  52 reviews
Sales Rank: 9215
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 328
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.7 x 0.9
ISBN: 0834802228
Dewey Decimal Number: 495.682421
EAN: 9780834802223
ASIN: 0834802228
Publication Date: November 1, 1987
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Essential Kanji is an integrated course for learning to read and write the 2,000 basic Japanese characters. It introduces the kanji that are now in everyday use, a mastery of which makes it possible to read most modern Japanese. Devised for either home or classroom use, the book has been tested and refined by years of use in university classes taught by the author.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 47 more reviews...
 Pointless June 29, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
There is no reason to buy this book. It is not a kanji dictionary, so it will be of limited use for that purpose. It also has very limited use as a self-instruction text, because the order the kanji are presented in is illogical for foreign learners (so many times you end up learning a complicated kanji, only to find that simple parts of that kanji turn up as their own kanji *later in the book*), and there are no mnemonics of any kind. Many compound words are presented, but there is no information on how to actually use them, so you cannot use it to learn new vocabulary unless you already know the words. The stroke order diagrams are mildly helpful, but you can find animated ones online for free (WWWJDIC will have a diagram for probably every single kanji in the book). Basically, the book amounts to one big kanji list. Henshall's Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, etc. are much better than this.
 essential kanji June 28, 2008
The book was in excellent condition. I had purchased it for my son who is teaching English in Japan currently. He'll be home for vacation in August. He had asked me to purchase it for him so he can become more proficient in Japanese Kanji.
 A good Buy June 20, 2008
I've tried several kanji learning books and this one is not a bad one. I think the only cool part was that it also has the Mandarin reading and traditional characters. For each word only two compounds are given, and only uses kanji that has already been introduced as it introduces compounds. So you keep on expanding your vocabulary that uses these new kanji. I think this is a super effective way of remembering kanji, especially if you write a few sentences with the new compounds. It doesn't always point out which words have awkward readings, though I think it's a nice course though but I'd say it'd would be a lot better if you also Get The Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary (Japanese for Busy People) because it just goes so much more into detail and lists a lot more compounds. The two go hand in hand, one as a course and the other as reference.
Great book!! June 12, 2008
This book has the principal 2000 kanji with their meaning, hiragana writting and a great thing: the correct order to write kanji (correct order of each line).
 Little more than a reference book. April 19, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this book hoping that it would provide me with a means of learning kanji. I was quite disappointed when it arrived. This book is nothing more than a reference. It shows you a kanji, gives you a short and concise English meaning for it, gives you the readings (in romaji, rather than hiragana and katakana), gives you 2 compounds that use the kanji, and it gives you the stroke order. That's basically it. There's no commentary on the kanji telling you how to remember them, the history of it, or ANYTHING. The compounds that it gives you for each kanji don't even give you context for how the word should be used. All of the information in this book is freely available at numerous web sites across the internet, or in most kanji dictionaries. This book has basically just sat on my shelf collecting dust since I purchased it.
If you are truly interested in learning Kanji, I would recommend that you start with the excellent book "Remembering the Kanji volume 1" by James Heisig. It's an amazing book that teaches you how to remember the kanji quite effortlessly. I learned how to write all of the joyo kanji from memory in just 3 months using that book.
This book on the other hand, just seems rather... pointless.
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