Beta-guy's Blog

I’ve been learning Japanese since December, first thing I learned was Hiragana, and Katakana. Over the months I’ve studied some kanji, and I’ve been working on getting my particles straight.  I’ll be absolutely honest and tell you I still have trouble knowing when to use my particles or what particles to use where.  let’s get into the programs I’d like to discuss.

One program is called NihongoUp and can be found here. when you start it up, you are presented with 4 options, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, and Particles. The program is simple enough for the first 2 options, they show you the various letters of the alphabet you’re testing, and you have you type in the romaji (english letters) that correspond to those letters. The better you do the faster the letters come down. Next you have Kanji, at the bottom there is a sentence and a word will be highlighted, and 4 balloons come down each with a different kanji you hit the number that corresponds with the correct kanji. Last you have Particles, again you have a sentence this time there is a blank spot where a particle should be and you have 4 balloons coming down you have to select the correct particles.

The program is fully functional now with the execption of JLPT 2 and up (coming soon).   This program is designed to be multiplatform supporting Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Another tool I’ve started using is Read the Kanji, they have hiragana/katakana sets as well but the focus is on kanji, they show you a word written in Kanji, and you have to spell out the reading of the kanji correctly.  They keep tract of how well you know each kanji in a given word based on your past history with other words that used the same kanji character. they show you sample sentences with the word, and if you click on the word it even shows you the meanings of each kanji. Read the kanji can be found here.

I just got back from Otafest (my first anime convention) and it was great,  alot of anime was available to watch, as well as the Death Note movies, had 2 Japanese lessons while I was there Watched Cosplay chess, and even bought a souvenir. While I was there I even saw the Canadian premier of “Death Note: L, Change the WorLd.”. I regret I didn’t take any pictures, Next year I’ll try to take a more active role. All in all in you haven’t gone to an anime convention before but have an interest, it’s definitely an exciting atmosphere, filled with interesting people, and fun events to participate in, even if you just want to watch your favorite anime, it’s still a great time.

I’ve tried learning other languages, and there was one thing that kept scaring me away, hundreds of thousands of words to memorize, that’s a very scary thought, but Japanese solves this issue in a unique fashion, Kanji.

I’ve come to think of Kanji like a list of basic words that the rest of the vocabulary is built on. If you remember the Jouyou kanji (1,945 kanji characters) it’s easier than learning over 100,000 words, plus if you don’t know a word written in kanji you can separate the individual kanji to get the general idea being spoken of (unless the kanji is being used purely for pronunciation). This also helps in learning the vocabulary, because you have a foundation, for example tenki means weather in Japanese, but if you take the kanji 天 (ten meaning sky or heavens) and 気 (ki meaning mood or atmosphere) it speaks of the mood of the heavens or the atmosphere of the sky.  Once you see how the combination of the kanji works,  you might react like I did  by simply being amazed that you now you not only remember the word but now you understand it.

There are probably better kanji combinations then that, but I’m also learning, try to learn the kanji at your own pace, try to read the kanji combinations if you see a kanji you are unfamiliar with try this, it helps you find the kanji by  elements of the kanji called radicals. Personally I use this alot, and find it quite helpful. Glood luck in learning the kanji.

This is the first post on my new Blog, and to start things off I’d like to point out about a contest (not mine) For those not familiar with poken check out this link http://poken.jp/en/ I found out about Poken during a gathering of bloggers about Japan, basically this poken is a fun business card, if you meet some one at an anime convention or something and you’d like to keep in contact with them poken would allow you to do so as in 2 -3 seconds the information would be transferred, and once you get home you can chat on your social networking sites.

Personally I’d love to get a Poken as will be going to an anime convention next month, and it’d be great to stay in contact with cool people I meet there. if this sounds like fun, then follow the link http://blog.japansoc.org/2009/04/12/japansoc-poken-contest/.