: About Me

My passion is ...

Trying to be passionate, not quite making it, and ending up luke-warm and overly sensitive.

I know too much about ...

Japanese academia

My parents always told me ...

"I'll give you something to cry about..."

My first job ...

Dishwasher

My inspiration ...

My grandfather and the first half of the 20th century in America.

Arts & Humanities > Asian Languages Learning the Japanese alphabets

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The Japanese language does not have an alphabet. What it has is three writing systems used in conjunction: two of them are parallel phonographic syllabaries, and the third is a set of morpho-phonographic Chinese characters. (While the roman alphabet is often used for transliteration, it cannot be taken very seriously as a Japanese writing system. It is used to approximate the sounds only.) But to get down to what all of that really means: We can say that essentially, Japanese uses three writing systems, which are all mixed up, and this can make learning to read or write Japanese a formidab...

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