By Al Harding 
If you are lucky enough to get your hands on a Japanese newspaper, one thing will stand out right away. They aren't using the same characters we are. This may seem like an obvious observation, but it isn't. The fact that the Japanese written language - Hiragana - is so distinctly different from what we use is one of the things that makes the language so hard to learn.
When you are immersing yourself in a new language - Spanish, Italian, French, etc. - you only have to learn how to pronounce the letters, create the sentences, and translate words. You don't need to know a whole new set of characters. Sure, Norwegian or Swedish may have a few odd-looking letters, but for the most part, they are the same as in English.
Many people in this country learn Japanese through the use of the Arabic lettering system, which is sort of like cheating. If you go to Japan, you won't see a lot of this and you will be lost. And, that is what happened to me.
I had several years of Japanese lessons and felt pretty confident in my language skills, but when I got to Yokohama, I was in big trouble. I could speak conversationally, but couldn't read a street sign, couldn't read a map, and didn't even know if I was at the correct hotel. If you are traveling in Japan without a native speaker, you definitely need to learn Hiragana!
You can learn Hiragana several ways. You can take years and years of classes and hope you remember some of it. You can take courses online or use software programs (like Rocket Software's Japanese program), or you can simply move to Japan and hope it soaks in somehow. I chose the easy route - software! - and can now recognize enough Hiragana to make my next trip far more rewarding.
Al Harding is the director of popular blog StartLearningJapaneseOnline.Com. He is an expert on language learning and his blog contains stacks of information on things like how to learn to write Japanese and much more. Get free tips from his site today! Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Al_Harding |
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar