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Title: God I hated this book.
Review: I was issued this and Reading Japanese for a college course in 1983. They use a contrived pronunciation system which only makes learning harder. Japanese has a standard way to Romanize syllables and it isn't possible to duplicate the system they use on a computer. I have met people who have had success with the book, but you need to have an instructor to really make any progress. I recommend Easy Japanese by Jack Stewart as a first book if you want to be self-taught. The companion book, Reading Japanese, is much more useful.When I went to Japan, I was often corrected on my vocabulary used in this book for it being archaic. "Dictionary" was one of the words they said was not current. That's kind of a glaring error! There is an odd obsession with "furoshikis," which are not really used anymore.This is not a fun way to learn a language.
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