Japanese Kanji and Kana ─ A Complete Guide to the Japanese Writing System

Hadamitzky, an author of Japanese language learning materials, and Spahn, a technical translator and consultant who has worked in Japan as a teacher, computer magazine writer, programmer, and translator, explain kanji and kana to beginners learning how to read Japanese. They first introduce transliteration and the two sets of phonetic characters, the hiragana and the katakana (the kana), then punctuation and ideographic characters (the kanji) and how they arose and are put together, what they mean, how to find them in a character dictionary, and how to write, pronounce, and learn them. The main part of the book is the official list of 2,136 kanji, which proceeds from simple and frequent to more complex and less common. Each includes its identification number, how it is written, and its stroke-count, readings and meanings, handwritten forms and variants, structure and graphic components, radical, and location in character dictionaries. Also listed are up to five compounds with readings and meanings. Indexes are by reading, stroke-count, and radical. This edition has been expanded and updated to include 200 more kanji and to reflect the Japanese government's official Joyo kanji list. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)