How to Read Japanese - Master the 4 Writing Styles

If learning to read in English wasn't tough enough, learning to read Japanese can possibly be even more daunting because they actually have 4 different writing styles: Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, and Romaji. The typical Japanese learner starts off learning Hiragana, followed by Katakana and then the most daunting of all, Kanji.

1. Hiragana: a rounded and curvy looking alphabet consisting of 46 characters used mainly for Japanese words

Hiragana is phonetic, so once you learn the 46 characters you will be able to sound out and read most anything. However, a word to the wise, there are no spaces between words so it does take a while to get used to it. Keep reading and you'll eventually get the hang of it.
The reason most people start with Hiragana is because the majority of Japanese is written in this style. It is also commonly used for furigana, which are characters on top of Kanji to help you determine how to pronounce them.
And as overrated as it sounds, flashcards really help. Put the Japanese character on one side and the English pronunciation on the other and practice, practice, practice!
Read some manga! Most manga have furigana so you can read them without knowing Kanji, and the pictures will also help you quickly decipher the meanings.

2. Katakana: a more square looking alphabet also consisting of 46 characters used mostly for foreign words

Katakana is both the same and the opposite of Hiragana at the same time. There are still 46 phonetic characters that represent the exact same syllables as Hiragana, but the characters are completely different.
Katakana is most commonly found in restaurants and electronic stores so it's not as prevalent as Hiragana.
Hiragana and Katakana can usually be mastered in a few weeks, so it's perfect for those just learning to read Japanese.
Children's books are perfect for beginners! They are mostly written in kana, both Hiragana and Katakana characters, with very little Kanji so it can be read easily once you've learned the alphabets.

3. Kanji: borrowed Chinese characters

The reason Kanji is so daunting to most people is because it is not phonetic and instead relies on symbols and images to derive it's meaning.
On average about 2000 Kanji characters are used regularly in the Japanese language. However, don't let that daunt you! It turns out if you study the most 1000 commonly used characters you will be able to achieve a 93% comprehension rate.
The important thing here is to focus on the Kanji that are most commonly used- http://www.tidraso.co.uk/kanji_frequency.html and your reading ability will skyrocket!
There are two different readings for Kanji: a Japanese reading, kunyomi, and a Chinese reading, onyomi. Usually kun readings are written in Hiragana, for native words, and on readings are written in katakana, since it's borrowed.
Since Kanji is a logographic writing system, it may help to find some pictures in the character or come up with a story or a little mnemonic device about the character and it's meaning to help you remember the Kanji.
The best place to practice reading Japanese is online! There are several helpful internet apps that help instantly translate and provide definitions of Japanese characters that make reading that much easier. It's like having a Kanji dictionary at your fingertips!

4. Romaji: words written in the Western alphabet

Romaji is the fastest way to learn to read and understand what the Japanese language sounds like. It provides a huge initial boost for beginners to read Japanese.
However, since the pronunciation is Westernized, reading Romaji will not help achieve a great Japanese accent. In addition, very few Japanese people use Romaji. It's mostly used when Japanese people are trying to communicate with foreigners.

Japanese can be a very tricky and difficult language to read since it's so radically different from our English alphabet. However, these tips and tricks will help you cut down your learning time and propel you to becoming literate in record time. To see how I personally learned Japanese in less than 1 year, download this free video:

How to Learn Fluent Japanese

http://www.japanesethroughanime.com/

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Practice Writing in a Different Language By Writing Online Articles - A Good Way to Learn English

The other day, I was talking to a fellow online article writer over the Internet. He is in a country, a rather large one, but it isn't an English speaking nation. Although many people there do speak English, it is not their regular language. He told me that he wrote online articles to reach English-speaking markets, and to make new friends. I could tell by his e-mail that he was still practicing, and honing his skills. Okay so, let's talk about this case study for a moment shall we?

Does writing online articles help someone learn English? It certainly helps them learn to write in English, and English is a hard language to learn because of its idiosyncrasies, and difficult spellings. Nevertheless, he was well on his way to making it happen. For instance, he knows that his articles need to be perfect, and in grammatically correct English, otherwise no one will take him seriously. He also knows that he must spend time to make sure it is correct, and check his work against various electronic translation devices, and also show it to his friend who speaks and writes English already.

Having someone that speaks and writes in their native English able to do your editing will go a long way to assisting you in understanding what is right and what is wrong. It was interesting to see so many people from all over the world jumping on board into the world of article writing on the Internet, and although at first even though their quantity was high, it was obvious that they were challenged by many of the sentence structure, grammatical rules, and hard to learn spelling of important words.

It is possible to learn "Simple English" which would be about 750 words in the English language without too much problem; being able to put the writing together in proper sentences for use in blogging, e-mails, tweeting, and all sorts of electronic communication? I believe so. The more people who learn English; to both write and speak it, the closer the world will get together because it is in fact the business and Internet language of the world.

Yes, it can be frustrating for someone that doesn't know how to write English yet, having their articles rejected, but nothing good in life is easy, and if foreign speaking individuals learning English as a second language are able to make this happen, as well as get these articles published, everyone wins around the world, as more and more people share information about their culture, way of life, and needs, wants, and desires. It brings humanity closer together, and it's a good thing.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Writing Skills. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/

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Writing in Chinese for Kids Is Simple

Writing in Chinese for kids is simple as long as you can grasp the eight basic brush strokes needed to write any symbol (or word) from the Chinese language. The Chinese use a form of writing called calligraphy that uses a brush and ink to make simple and clean strokes for traditional Chinese writing. Traditional Chinese writing is classified into eight rather simple forms:

1. "Dian," which is a simple dot (. )
2. "Heng," which is a horizontal stroke that falls from the left to right ( - )
3. "Shu." which is a vertical stroke that goes from the top to bottom ( | )
4. "Gou," which is a hook that is attached to other strokes ( ')
5. "Ti," is a diagonal stroke that rises from the left to right ( / )
6. "Pie," is a diagonal stroke that falls from right to left ( / )
7. "Duan Pie," is a short diagonal stroke that falls from right to left ( ` )
8. "Na," is a horizontal stroke that falls from left to right ( \ )

Many of times, these strokes are combined without moving the pen or brush off the paper, they just sort of flow together like a magnificent piece of art. Learning how to write Chinese can be simple as long as you know the basic steps for writing the symbols. Not all of these forms are in every symbol, but some symbols have more than one of these forms. Furthermore, some of the forms are connected without removing the pen or brush from the paper. For example, water (æ°´) combines the forms of "heng," "shu," "gou," "ti," "pie," "duan pie," and "na." However, if you add "duan" to the top of the symbol, it changes water to eternally. The simple addition or subtraction of a symbol form can drastically change the meaning of the word you are trying to use, which makes it imperative to take your time and not smudge the characters when learning how to write Chinese.

Writing in Chinese for kids can also be a fun learning experience. When writing the symbols, especially if you are using a brush, it can feel like you are doing art simply because it takes practice to become good and after doing it for a while, it becomes fun. Chinese words for kids can be interesting and fun to learn to do when working with more advanced words because of how detailed they can be, the symbols themselves look like a piece of art.

http://speakmandarin.com/ makes learning Mandarin Chinese easy! You can choose to learn from predefined courseware or have your sessions customized to suit your needs. So check out SpeakMandarin.com today to see how learning Mandarin Chinese really isn't as difficult as you may think!

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