Hiragana/katakana Books

[hideway]

I'm currently finishing learning and memorizing both hiragana and katakana and I'm setting my next objective to start learning about the grammar and sentence construction. Since I'm doing this in my very limited spare time, it will still take some time to get both kanas to a level where I feel I can life without kana charts at all, so this isn't really urgent.

Since many already know your share of japanese, I was wondering if this is how you organized your study and if you have any advice for me about my study plan. I'm thinking in learning kanji as soon as I have a solid knowledge about sentence construction. Also, do you know of any book writen mostly in hiragana and katakana.

[hkBattousai]

It is not easy to find one on the web. Ones I too struggled searching on the net, but couldn't find any.
The best thing is to buy one from Amazon.

[yukio_michael]

That's how I started studying Japanese, by learning hiragana & katana as a prerequisite... I'm pretty rusty w/ katakana now because I'm out of practice--- I'm not overly fond of katakana.

It's good though to go about learning kanji through a regular coursebook rather than just sitting down and memorizing a bunch of characters. Course books like Minna no Nihongo (http://www.amazon.com/Minna-No-Nihongo/dp/4883191036/sr=8-1/qid=1170537964/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7190216-4994218?ie=UTF8&s=books), Japanese for Everyone (http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Everyone-Functional-Approach-Communication/dp/0870408534/sr=1-1/qid=1170538033/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7190216-4994218?ie=UTF8&s=books), & Genki (http://www.genki-online.com/) start with hiragana and gradually ramp up to kanji usage, which is then reinforced with each lesson... I think it's better to study Japanese as a whole process than each thing discreetly, though reference books on grammer, kanji, particles, verbs, adverbs, etcetera always help. Just don't go out and buy a bunch of books, start with one course book and add books as your Japanese level dictates...

Your best bet for books written entirely in hiragana are books written for children which you should be able to buy off of amazon.co.jp, also, you might be able to order them from Bookoff (http://www.bookoff.co.jp/), a large used book chain in Japan, but I'm uncertain about shipping.

Good luck.

[Hari Edo]

You should be able to learn the whole katakana in a couple of weeks of spare time if you just learn five new ones a day. Then the hiragana.

Michael Rowley made a simple book with pictures resembling each kana, like a person CHEEring with a flag overhead for the hiragana チ (chi), or a fish caught in a NEt for the katakana ね (ne).

If you don't find flashcards for these, just draw your own. Then drill yourself for five minutes with just five new cards for today, then another five minutes with them mixed into yesterday's stack. Pretty soon you'll be able to say the sound of each as fast as you see them.

For grammar, the first thing to know is that important words are followed by special short words called particles. The particles just explain why you're including those important words in the sentence. The subject is followed by a subject particle. The direct object is followed by a direct object particle. Words like "of" and "and" are just particles to join noun concepts. The main verb comes after everything else. A question particle or a conjunction particle can follow whole sentences. Most (if not all) of the particles are just spelled as one or two syllables in katakana). This sounds complicated but it's really VERY easy to grasp once you've seen a few examples.

[Buntaro]

Hideaway,

I agree that it is difficult to find a good reader that starts in kana and works its way up to kanji.

I rember reading the Nakagawa series many years ago. That is the best reader I have ever seen, but it is hopelessly outdated. Does anyone have a copy of that ol' Nakagawa reader?