Japanese speech machine

Internet help us to learn Language. Actually I can not update my site everyday without online dictionary. Regarding J-E dictioanary, my American friend reccomands this . And I like this in Japanese online site.　Since junior high school, I have been learning English. But still it's very hard... Actually how many mistakes I made today here? ( need someone for proof reading. please!! ) However I suppose to learn Japanese will be harder? Grammer is unique, writeing and reading is complicated because we have three characters, Kanji(Chinese characters), Hiragana, Katakana, and we use alphabet too. For example, we have four way to write "I"

Chinece character :私
Hiragana : わたし
Katakana : ワタシ
Alphabet(Romanji) : watashi

Especially Chinese charactore has different sound in each combination and meanings. I will introduce simple online program , Japanese Speech Machine. Please copy and paste this sentense, you can know how to pronouce and talk. *

Comments

[Asics shoes]

A man is not old as long as he is seeking something. A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

[Michael]

Mari, I always enjoy reading your articles and diary entries. Thank you for your generosity in sharing interesting topics with English speakers through your writing.

Regarding the Japanese Speech Machine, I find that the quality of speech is not very good, but it is helpful since it allows us to easily hear every sound from a sentence. Sometimes in natural speech, the sound goes by too fast and we miss it.

Some of your readers might be interested in the software, Voice of Japan. I have linked to it in the URL above. It is a program for Windows that allows you to paste or type any Japanese text and then hear it spoken in a pleasant female voice. The quality of the speech is excellent - it almost sounds like a real person. I was very impressed the first time I used it, and I still use it today several years later because I enjoy having it read web pages to me. Since the voice is very realistic, it allows me to train my listening skills very well.

The program isn't free, but there is a free two-week trial I think, so someone can try it out to see if it's worth buying. For people studying Japanese but with no native speaker to talk to, it could be a very valuable study aid. Maybe you will look at the program, too, Mari... I think you will be very impressed by the quality!

[kayla]

hi im studying japanese and i would like to know how to write them in japanese if its ok with you. here are some of the words: watashi, new zealand

thanks for taking time to read this, hope you get back to me.

kayla

[Erin]

Hello!

I'm a college student living from America and think your magazine is very interesting! I saw that you want someone to proofread for you, and I would love to help out! I'm a Japanese major at University of Oregon, and I also studied at Waseda University for a year. I love Tokyo, and would be honored to help you show English speakers what it's really like. Please write me ([email protected]) if you would like me to help.

Thank you, and good luck!!!

Erin

[Julian Morrison]

I find a thing that helps me a lot with learing Japanese is watching subtitled Japanese cartoons! It's a lot easier to learn a language when you already know the sounds, and by reading the subtitles I begin to get a sort of feel for what the spoken words mean. So when I actually learn them, they are already half-way memorized.

I have a dictionary I can recommend for learning Japanese, because it has the words in romaji and in english alphabetical order. That way I can look up words by the sound while I'm learning the alphabets seperately. It's here http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4770028490/

[teejay]

hi there......learning japanese itself i think is not that difficult but unless you can read japanese quite well it is so difficult to study by yourself. for example, if you can read a language quite well you can start buying easy books or read signs etc... and learn more and more words and expressions that way. with japanese and some other languages as well it is almost impossible to do that. for self-study, one needs to rely on books in romaji, hiragana or katakana.

as far as grammar is concerned, i think japanese is not that difficult. however, the difference between keigo (official polite japanese) and casual as well as the difference between the japanese spoken by men and women can be quite confusing and difficult for us foreigners. one of these days i will hopefully be half-way fluent.

enjoy the weekend !

[Puddles]

I'd be happy to help proof read your stuff!