Thursday, April 29, 2004

For the uninitiated, learning the Japanese language is an exhaustive, detrimental exercise that hacks away at your english roots, enervate and debilitate, period. Its 3 form writing system, namely Hiragana, Katagana and Kanji ( chinese characters ), scares the bollocks out of non-native learners and make Japanese one of the toughest language to master. For english speaking folks, its the katagana form that carries the heaviest destructive payload. Katagana is used extensively to pronounce foreign names and subject matter, so for example "Tape Recorder" in english would translate as :

"Te-pu-re-ko-da"

1) Curtain - "ka-te-n"
2) Locker - "Ro-ka"
3) Mechanical pencil - "She-ya-pu-pen-she-ru" ( sharp pencil )

And don't even get me started on the word "accessories", or "whiteboard".

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