Editor: J-Flash is a small program based on Flash Cards that focuses on the memorization of Hiragana and Katakana. Additionally, it is also possible to learn some vocabulary and kanji. Information and user feedback is given through a cute anime school girl.
Japanese Writing
Japanese is written in a mixture of Kana and Kanji. Kanji are ideograms- symbols which stand for entire ideas, or things. There are several thousand kanji.
Kana are Japanese phonograms- symbols which stand for sound, like the characters of the English alphabet.
To read true Japanese, you must master both kanji, and kana.
Hiragana And Katakana
Just like English has two sets of characters for it's alphabet (upper case and lower case), Japanese Kana has two corresponding sets of characters- Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana are used for Japanese words while Katakana are used for imported words, or to add emphasis (like using italics). It is possible to represent Japanese words using english characters. Turning Japanese characters into Roman ones is called romanization. The resulting Roman characters are called romaji.
