Kana no quiz is a program to learn the Japanese syllabary. They are showing the syllables, and we have to introduce figurative reading in romaji or choose among several possibilities.

Then a voice (a voice to choose between male or female) will tell you how to pronounce. We can do a test only hiragana, katakana only, mixed or syllables also modified.

Finally, we obtain the number of correct answers and a list of syllables that we could not identify.

This program is very useful to recognize and memorize the syllables and write much more interactive and again in a lot of pages. It also has the advantage of hearing the pronunciation. Available in English, French, German, Portuguese ... and you can download Choplair.org .

* Updated September 27

He reports the leading developer of Kana no quiz, which is now also available in Castilian and Galician. The funny thing is I know the person who made the translation, was made in 2007 and we had almost forgotten. But it seems that this summer launched a new version that includes these changes and today we went to find out through the comments left here in charge of Choplair. ^ _ *

That said, for all those who hoped the program in Castilian, and you can download the version 1.9.5 .

Ken Tanaka is a white boy who was adopted by a Japanese family when he was just a child. Apparently, their biological parents were from the U.S., for what he has Western features 100% but have been living all his life in Japan, it behaves like the Japanese and barely speak English.

Ken Tanaka has started to make known among the community when he started making videos Youtube searching for their biological parents Jonathan and Linda Smith. Became known as videos, which this year made an appearance a few seconds on the hit series Heroes.

To me, personally irritates me a little when speaking in English, but has some videos that are pretty good.
Then I put some videos of Ken explaining how to speak Japanese without saying a word. If yes, this sounds and gestures to her head is normal among the Japanese, especially when the answer they want to give a bad thing, but do not be rude and say no, they usually make some gesture or noise.

Update: As indicated in the comments, it seems that Ken Tanaka is actually David Urgy , American actor who has done several TV commercials like Verizon and acted in several films.
This appears to be promoted in creating a fictional character Youtube is becoming fashionable. Remember the case of lonelygirl .

Our friend David Stephen Flapyinjapan has decided to collaborate with the initiative to give away a trip to Japan advertise on this blog with his latest project: Japanese .

Periodically in Japanese can find videos to learn Japanese, which appear in David himself and his two friends, Japanese ( Rei and Eri ).
The videos are starting with a basic level so that all who are starting their Japanese studies go forward slowly while watching these videos of Japanese.
From my point of view videos are fine, because videos are not your typical boring study, if David and his friends make the video is very entertaining and fun.

Then I put the latest video from Japan in which is "the demonstration".

Last week's blog reading Japanprobe found a page very interesting to study Kanji. The page is called Read the Kanji , and consists in introducing the reading of the kanji on the screen and can further divide the level of difficulty in the 4 levels of JLPT .

To all who are studying Japanese, I recommend you to try Read The Kanji, and also you can also save a history of successful and failed kanjis if you register to the site.

As many of you all know, the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test or Japanese: nōryoku shiken) is a test to evaluate and certify the level of Japanese people outside Japan.
This test consists basically of three parts: vocabulary / kanji, listening and reading comprehension auditva.

A few months ago announced some changes in this test system. Some of these changes are:

- Levels of JLPT who were divided into four levels, to become five levels from 2010. Including the new level between level 2 and 3. I guess this will change to Level 3 was only about 300 kanji to be known, but the level 2 and are 1000 kanji.

- Level 1 is to become increasingly difficult.

- So far, the review could only be made once a year, performing the exam on the same day around the world, which was the first Sunday of December. From next year, will also level 1 and 2 in July.

- From 2010 stop publishing the notes and previous tests in the official website .

Changes seem to me very interesting, especially having a more level and doing the exams twice a year. One of the main reasons why I've never done is because the JLPT level 3 have looked like something I proved nothing and yet the level 2 had to be known very many kanji to pass the exam. I encourage her to study more kanji and introduce the new level in 2010.

For those of you who are studying Japanese or for those who still have difficulties with the kanji, there is an "addon" for Firefox called rikaichan where you can see the meaning and the reading of Japanese characters by simply moving the mouse over the characters. This addon translated from Japanese into English, German, French or Russian.

With this addon I find it very easy to read pages, where I just want to translate Japanese kanji I do not know or words that their meaning is not even to read it. The truth is that this is much easier than having to go cutting and pasting words into a translator.

In this link you can download the addon and this page you can download the dictionary needed to implement rikaichan.

One of the things I say quite the Japanese is that I have a talk very "kawaii" or "cute" (nice), but not because they speak very well, but because it looks like a Japanese fine, so fine I'm talking about the same than girls.
In the Japanese language has many distinctions of words for boys and girls words. Not that there's a grammar rule for this, but if there are words much used by one gender or the other and so when you use the opposite gender seems odd. For example, there's more words to talk about the girls, which is usually more formal and the kids so they can use, but overuse of these words for the guys seem to talk a girl.

What happens to me in Japanese, I think that happens quite foreign to the subject a few weeks ago I told about how difficult it is to make Japanese friends and how easy it is to make Japanese friends , therefore, continually talking only with girls, you learn Japanese, but I did not know at first is that some of those words are usually used only by girls, so then when you speak Japanese, you talk like girls and they say you speak a very Japanese "Kawaii" (pretty), as the Japanese of the boys is usually more dirty and a little more rude.

Here I put some examples of words used by the boys and girls, I hope that we all help me to put more examples.

Meaning Boys Girls

Maji ookii CYOU dekai Very Large

Well Umai Oishi (for food)

Ore Watashi / Boku I

Benjy Otearai WC

Meshi Gohan Lunch

Onaka suita Hara Hetta I have hunger

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the Japanese of the girls gets closer to the formal Japanese, and if you get used to using words too young and do not control the use in public when we can bring problems. I spent some time talking to my Korean friends say "Omae" (you) instead of "anata" (you) and when I escaped the saying "Omae" others face looked at me want to kill, as "Omae "It's pretty dirty or derogatory.