Review of Kanji from the Start: A Comprehensive Japanese Reader by Edmund Ronald

Book divided into 12 lessons, and the usual appendices. A lesson consists of an unnanotated text page (about 500 characters), followed by a reading and tranlsation page, then a character by character gloss and a grammar explanation. The character gloss is the usual graphics/etymology stuff, I only glance at it. The texts themselves, however, are interesting: Very nice large typography, meandering sentences with lots of compounds, which native speakers tell me are typical "written language" usage. Here is an example paragraph from lesson 6:

大臣は、当たり役で、人気があって、首相に信用が厚ければ、内閣改造になっても、 任務を,続け、将来は、元老まで成るかもしれません。が、失敗すれば、 新人に替わるはずです。

I have not proofread the above after typing it in. Let the reader appreciate whether this is or not appropriate for beginners. I find it gives useful material for my intermediate level, but would prefer something less condensed. The grammar notes provide a useful key for analyzing the overlong example sentences.

To sum up, I continue to use Japanese for Masochists out of sheer despair because I cannot find anything with a less steep learning curve. I am not a professional linguist myself although I speak a lot of languages, so your mileage may differ.

☆ See all reviews by Edmund Ronald.