I recently bought a book. The book is called ‘Japanese For Busy People’. I’m hoping that it will help me to learn Japanese…
My optimistic assumption was that this book would have condensed the thoroughly difficult process of learning to read and speak Japanese into so short a time that even busy people can fit it in. Turns out it actually instructs busy people in how to be busy in Japan. Instead of learning classic starter language like ‘Hello, my name is Will. I like eating apples. How are you’, the book teaches how to busily meet other busy people and converse in a busy business-y manner.
What I did learn is that Japanese writing can be divided into three categories:
1 – kanji: Chinese characters used to represent words of both Chinese and Japanese Origin
2 – hiragana: Phonetic syllabary which appear curvy
3 – katakana: Usually used for foreign words and names, this system is comprised of straight line based characters.
All three systems are customarily used in written Japanese, so there’s a lot to learn! I think I might do some design work incorporating my newly-learned alphabet, so look out for that.
Meanwhile, he’s a thoroughly enjoyable rendition of the simplest characters of the Hiragana alpabet. Enjoy!:
