Why japanese is hard - part #1

clipped from pepper.idge.net The Japanese writing system is broken down into three separate, complete, and insane, parts: Hiragana ("those squiggily letters"), Katakana ("those boxy letters") and Kanji ("roughly 4 million embodiments of your worst nightmares"). Hiragana is used to spell out Japanese words using syllables. It consist of many letters, all of which look completely different and bear absolutely no resemblance to each other whatsoever. Hiragana were devloped by having a bunch of completely blind, deaf, and dumb Japanese people scribble things on pieces of paper while having no idea why they were doing so. The resulting designs were then called "hiaragana". The prince who invented these characters, Yorimushi("stinking monkey-bush-donkey") was promptly bludgeoned to death. But don't worry, because you'll hardly use Hiragana in "real life".

My current top japanese course....

Without a doubt my conversational language course of choice is the newly released (October 2007) Rocket Languages series.

Don’t be intimidated by the seeming size of the task!

The lessons alternate between downloadable audio MP3s - listen on your i-pod or whatever followed up by a text lesson.

In each of these text lessons, you can expect detailed grammar lessons and examples, invaluable cultural notes (that not only help you with what to say and when to say it but also how to act). You’ll get an insight into the written Japanese as well.

The complete Rocket Japanese package includes a variety of materials to supplement each audio lesson, including the ever popular software-based learning games, MegaVocab, MegaAudio, MegaHiragana… and lots more.

Find out more, sign up for the free 6 day mini-course to check it out

This course has selected audio tracks, lessons, and activities from the FULL Rocket Japanese course and is yours FREE with absolutely no obligation whatsoever...