Remembering the Kanji 2 : A Systematic Guide to Reading the Japanese Characters

Following the first volume of Remembering the Kanji, the present work provides students with helpful tools for learning the pronunciation of the kanji.Behind the notorious inconsistencies in the way the Japanese language has come to pronounce the characters it received from China lie several coherent patterns.Identifying these patterns and arranging them in logical order can reduce dramatically the amount of time spent in the brute memorization of sounds unrelated to written forms. Many of the “primitive elements,” or building blocks, used in the drawing of the characters also serve to indicate the “Chinese reading” that particular kanji use, chiefly in compound terms.By learning one of the kanji that uses such a “signal primitive,” one can learn the entire group at the same time.In this way, Remembering the Kanji 2 lays out the varieties of phonetic pattern and offers helpful hints for learning readings, that might otherwise appear completely random, in an efficient and rational way.I