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A review by despinareviews
Unlocking Japanese with Paul Noble by Paul Noble
3.0
This is a book for beginners to start learning the Japanese language.
A bit of context - I have been learning Japanese for two years now (very part time) and have done classes/read textbooks. I have to say that this book is not the most helpful to my level, and I think you would have to know at least some Japanese before starting it. The reason is because it doesn't explain grammar structures in any depth, or provide a lot of vocabulary explanation, and uses exemplar sentences on repeat as its teaching method. Though repetition is effective in remembering things, I don't think this book would automatically solidify my knowledge in Japanese and should likely be used alongside much other material to make it fully effective. If this was a way to remember sentence structures and practice what you have learned in another context, then this book would likely be best productive in this way.
I would say it is worth noting the entire book is written in English script (romaji) and doesn't use hiragana/katakana and certainly no kanji, which I found quite disorienting because it jumps straight into things which you would assume require (ordinarily) at least hiragana/katakana knowledge). Also, some of the pronounciation guides are a bit ... wrong? I'll use a single example. 'I ate' in Japanese is tabemashita, normally pronounced ta (like tannoy) - be (like bell) - ma (like Matt) - sh (like shush, the i in shi is silent) - ta. For some reason the pronounciation guide for this word is 'ta-bay-mash-ta'. There were another few words I noticed as I went through which had a similar very 'English-ized' pronounciation, which would make your Japanese speaking sound incredibly unnatural.
I would also recommend reading this in paperback/physical form. The reason is that my ARC was on Kindle and it asks you to cover up the red writing a lot, which I struggled to do effectively on the touch screen. I think this would be much easier in physical format.
Overall a decent revision tool for Japanese beginners, but I personally wouldn't recommend it as an exclusive 'learn Japanese from scratch' book.
I was provided with an advanced reader copy via Netgalley and leave this review voluntarily.
A bit of context - I have been learning Japanese for two years now (very part time) and have done classes/read textbooks. I have to say that this book is not the most helpful to my level, and I think you would have to know at least some Japanese before starting it. The reason is because it doesn't explain grammar structures in any depth, or provide a lot of vocabulary explanation, and uses exemplar sentences on repeat as its teaching method. Though repetition is effective in remembering things, I don't think this book would automatically solidify my knowledge in Japanese and should likely be used alongside much other material to make it fully effective. If this was a way to remember sentence structures and practice what you have learned in another context, then this book would likely be best productive in this way.
I would say it is worth noting the entire book is written in English script (romaji) and doesn't use hiragana/katakana and certainly no kanji, which I found quite disorienting because it jumps straight into things which you would assume require (ordinarily) at least hiragana/katakana knowledge). Also, some of the pronounciation guides are a bit ... wrong? I'll use a single example. 'I ate' in Japanese is tabemashita, normally pronounced ta (like tannoy) - be (like bell) - ma (like Matt) - sh (like shush, the i in shi is silent) - ta. For some reason the pronounciation guide for this word is 'ta-bay-mash-ta'. There were another few words I noticed as I went through which had a similar very 'English-ized' pronounciation, which would make your Japanese speaking sound incredibly unnatural.
I would also recommend reading this in paperback/physical form. The reason is that my ARC was on Kindle and it asks you to cover up the red writing a lot, which I struggled to do effectively on the touch screen. I think this would be much easier in physical format.
Overall a decent revision tool for Japanese beginners, but I personally wouldn't recommend it as an exclusive 'learn Japanese from scratch' book.
I was provided with an advanced reader copy via Netgalley and leave this review voluntarily.