Wednesday, February 14, 2007

 

Kanji/Hanzi Desktop Wallpaper

Meanwhile there is a nice pool of free Kanji desktop wallpapers at www.Kanji-Sudoku.com:

12 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Lucky Characters

Sudoku Wallpaper with Chinese numbers 1-9 (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九) and last, but not least:

Martial Arts (Chinese, Korean, Japanese)

... no need to mention that TaeKwonDo 태권도 is written with Korean Hangul letters.

:-)


Chinese New Year is comming soon - time to wish you all the best for 2007 and please stay tuned - maybe one day (not too far away in the future) the Chinese course 333 Hanzi-in-a-Day will be finished, too.

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# posted by Claus @ 6:45 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

 

333 Kanji-en-une-journée

I noticed that the number of projects at www.lulu.com increased about 30% within 3 months (October 2006 -January 2007) - seems that the big time for self publishing & eBooks is comming soon ...


Thanks to Dieter - a teacher of the French language here in Germany - the French version of 333 Kanji-in-a-Day is ready.

You know the ritual: first download the free excerpt with 90 Kanji (333 Kanji-en-une-journée, extrait: les premiers 90 Kanji, 22 pages) and then go to my shop at Lulu.com to honor my work :-)


333 Kanji-en-une-journée

Des études de plusieurs années et des travaux de recherche ont comme résultat épatant qu'il est de règle que les caractères chinois ne soient pas introduits d'après leur apparence mais d'après leur signification dans le contexte du cours d'enseignement. Ce procédé a pour conséquence que l'acquisition de la langue se ralentit énormément. Dans ce cours Kanji vous allez découvrir un accès nouveau pour écrire et en même temps apprendre des caractères chinois (Kanji dans la langue japonaise, Hanzi dans la langue chinoise).

Par l'arrangement des Kanji optiques semblables dans de petits groupes sur du papier à écrire avec des caractères "vides" pour imiter (tracing sheets) votre résultat d'apprentissage va augmenter d'une manière considérable: Notre cerveau aime être fortifié d'une manière motrice en apprenant comme c'est le cas avec des exercices d'écriture. De petits nombres à côté des traits particuliers informent sur la succession et direction d'écrire correctes. Contrairement à d'autres matières d'apprentissage ces nombres sont indiqués seulement où ça semble nécessaire parce que votre sentiment pour la manière correcte d'écrire va s'améliorer d'une page à l'autre. La prononciation est indiquée non seulement avec Kana japonais mais aussi dans transcription (système Hepburn). Majuscules et Katakana pour les lectures On (d'origine chinoise), Hiragana pour des lectures Kun (d'origine japonaise).

Si vous êtes débutant(e) absolu(e) de la langue japonaise utilisez des sources supplémentaires et concentrez-vous sur les exercices d'écriture et la signification des Kanji particuliers en travaillant avec cet indicateur.
Il est recommandé d'utiliser chaque fois seulement une ligne par Kanji et par passage - récapituler la prononciation et la signification d'un Kanji peut raccourcir votre temps d'exercices d'écriture.

Si vous n'êtes pas tout à fait sûr de l'ordre correct des traits particuliers, comptez sur votre expérience: S'il n'y a pas des nombres d'aide, la direction d'écriture et son ordre correspond avec cela que vous avez appris jusqu'a maintenant (pourvu que vous ayez commencer ce cours de Kanji au début).

Pour chaque Kanji deux exemples des polices imprimées vous aident de reconnaître les petites différences par rapport au manuscrit.

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# posted by Claus @ 8:52 AM 0 comments
 

Kanji Tattoo Designs

I really don't want to know how many tattoos with wrong Chinese characters have been inked on human bodies. Please, all you tattoo lovers out there: think before you ink!

You are spending a lot of money to get a tattoo, at least take the time you needed to earn that money to think about your choice and sources of the Kanji. Use an English-Japanese dictionary or ask native speakers about the right translations and meanings of your idea.

To get you going several eBooks have been added to www.Kanji-Sudoku.com:


Please feel free to add your remarks here at this blog (I am longing for your feedback :-)

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# posted by Claus @ 8:07 AM 1 comments

Friday, December 29, 2006

 

333 Hanzi-in-a-Day

For a few moments I liked to be naïve by hoping after having finished 333 Kanji-in-a-Day all I need to do is replacing the Japanese readings with Mandarin readings (PinYin) to get the Chinese version of the course 333 Hanzi-in-a-Day accomplished. Fool I am - no way!


:-)



The simplified Chinese characters (Hanzi) as used in China & Singapore not only have more meanings (and slightly other ones) than the Chinese characters (Kanji) used in the Japanese language. They also allow forming other groups of similar characters, which is the fundamental method of this language course.

So after evaluating about 2000 Hanzi (all of them part of the Chinese Language Proficiency Test - HSK) the good news are: about 1000 Hanzi can easily be arranged in small groups similar by shape. Yet, instead of choosing one ore two main meanings - as with the Kanji course - I switched to offer more details for the Hanzi.

Now all given meanings should be seen as a description of a picture (which Chinese characters actually are - talking about ideograms or ideographs, pictograms or pictographs - choose the term you like :-)

No need to learn a picture's discription by heart, just look at a Chinese character and sense the "inner values" of each Hanzi - anyway, in most cases you won't be able to fix a Chinese character to exact one meaning only ...

Bad news: it took much more time than considered, so all that is published so far is the free excerpt with 90 Chinese characters of the course 333 Hanzi-in-a-Day (as usual as an eBook). So please feel free to get yourself ready for the Asian Century and start to learn some Hanzi or Kanji (depending on your mood or whatever your needs might be :-)

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# posted by Claus @ 4:46 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

 

333 Kanji-in-a-Day


Another Milestone - keeping this idea for more than 20 years in my mind ... I finally finished a Kanji teaching course book: 333 Kanji-in-a-Day. It is published as an eBook at Lulu.com and free excerpts are available at Kanji-Sudoku.com

A new approach to writing & learning hundreds of Chinese characters within hours

Generations of students have experienced many months of frustrating learning efforts caused by poor language learning methodology. A new mind blowing learning technology introduced in this course book will revolutionize the access to the Japanese and Chinese languages. Writing and memorizing of Chinese characters can now easily be done.

Chinese characters (Hanzi) - also used in the Japanese language (Kanji) - are arranged by their 'looks' (shape) instead of their meanings. Small groups of six similar characters each will help you to save precious time exercising writing and reading. Learning speed will be improved by creating a solid base of at least 333 Kanji just within hours. And this will boost your motivation to learn the Japanese language.

Get ready for the Asian Century.


About this eBook:

Many years of educational research unveiled a stunning fact: Chinese characters are traditionally introduced by their contextual meanings instead of their shape. And this considerably slowed down the language acquisition process. This course book offers a new approach to writing and learning Chinese characters (Kanji in the Japanese language, Hanzi in the Chinese language). By arranging the Kanji in small groups of similar shape on tracing sheets your learning performance will be increased.

Our brain really loves motoric reinforcement while learning through writing practice. Little numbers attached to some strokes are explaining the correct stroke order and writing direction. In contrast to all other educational resources the numbers will only be displayed where necessary as your feeling of the correct writing and stroke order will grow from page to page.

Readings (or pronunciation) are given both: in Japanese kana and transliteration (Hepburn system). CAPITALS and katakana are used for on-readings (Chinese origin), hiragana for kun-readings (Japanese origin).

If you are totally new to the Japanese language, please make use of additional resources and concentrate on writing and meanings while using this course book.

Use only one line of the tracing sheet per kanji and training cycle - repeating of the readings and meanings of the Kanji will help you to kill practice time :-)

If in doubt how to write a Kanji please use your experience: When there is no number displayed, the stroke order and writing is as you have previously learned (assuming that you started this course book from the very beginning).

Two printed fonts of each Kanji are displayed to help understand the small differences in their appearance especially when handwriting is concerned.

---

So far about the new content at www.Kanji-Sudoku.com - I'll come back to you soon :-)

# posted by Claus @ 12:47 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

 

Frankfurt Book Fair, Sudoku Paradoxon, Press Releases and Hiragana Sudoku

I've been busy again :-)

You can guess how curious I have been to check the popularity of Sudoku at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, especially regarding the Asian countries. A very subjective impression: in Korea and China Sudoku and other language puzzles like crossword puzzles seem to be farely unknown. Hong Kong, Singapore & Malaysia are somewhat aware of Sudoku but it's far away from the Western hype. And: Sudoku with Chinese characters are totally unknown. However, nearly everyone to whom I explained this idea was quickly 'infected', so there IS a big NEW market for all you folks out there (if you dare it!) and anyway a lot of work for me still to be done...

Recently I stumbled again (seems I never learnt to walk straight on :-) - Sudoku is about avoiding redundant informations (at least at the hardest level). Regarding the typical 9x9 format with nine different givens (usually the numbers 1-9, but you already know my ambitions to change that :-) there is still something left to be redundant: the 9th given (which ever)! Dropping that so only 8 different GIVENS are given (couldn't stand to play this pun :-) from the beginning will help me to solve this 'Sudoku Paradoxon'. I named these Sudoku the 'Less Given Sudoku' - this is not a new type of Sudoku games like 'Samurai' and so on, but fits to all logical variants: just be smart and drop more redundant information - it's all about LOGIC!

Well, a website with interesting stuff will not do without marketing which caused me to launch some press releases in the last weeks.

As with the Kanji Sudoku it really took me a very long time to get a fascinating reason for offering Hiragana Sudoku. The answer: Japanese proverbs. Beside of finding proverbs (kotowaza) with exactly nine different hiragana some handmade Sudoku with the proverbs in a line have been necessary to create this new way of learning not only Hiragana but also some Japanese aswell. Some interactive (Java Script) Japanese-English Kanji crossword puzzles have been added, too.

HINT (regarding the various free pdf files at www.Kanji-Sudoku.com): You might consider to download Adobe's free Asian font packs for Adobe [Acrobat] Reader (and the latest version of Adobe's Reader aswell) to install the necessary fonts on non-native computer systems to view and print pdf documents with CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean) fonts.

Hope to come back to you soon. All the best to those of you interested in learning the Chinese and Japanese language!


# posted by Claus @ 4:32 AM 0 comments

Thursday, September 14, 2006

 

Free Mobile Kanji Sudoku (J2ME midlet)



Another milestone: thanks to Leo (PhonPhun) a free version of Kanji-Sudoku M-Kanji-SuDoKu is available for mobile users (Smart Phones, PDAs). It is licensed under GPL and available via WAP download (OTA = over the air) at our new mobile portal: http://www.kanji-sudoku.com/wap/index.wml (please use the OPERA browser for viewing wml sites).



I have been busy designing Kanji/Hanzi numbers (1-9: 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九) in 7x7, 9x9, 11x11 and 15x15 matrices (less a surrounding line - so the characters are actually in the sizes 5x5, 7x7, 9x9 and 13x13). Imagine that in normal and bold fonts...

Well hidden, yet with a little help from Google :-), are even more online resources for Sudokus with Chinese characters and Japanese Kana (Hiragana).

Last - but not least - there are new 12x12 Sudokus with Chinese characters of the zodiac animal signs as used in the Japanese language (a Chinese version will follow). And yes: the 'Rat' is normally the first sign in the zodiac order, but the emphasis is on the year 2007 (year of the pig - wild boar) as these Sudokus are meant to be a nice present for Japanese people.

My friend Peter is back from Japan - I am really curious of what he has to tell me about his trip, especially when presenting his edition of Kanji-Sudoku as a gift to Japanese businessmen.

# posted by Claus @ 10:07 AM 1 comments

Thursday, August 10, 2006

 

Hiragana crossword puzzles and more kanji match games added

Instead of writing my thoughts to this blog I've been busy adding new content to Kanji-Sudoku.com. Looking back - the wheel comes full circle: As with the kana writing practice sheets, which have been developed more than 10 years ago. I will never understand why generations of children and students are learning the hiragana and katakana syllabaries following a grid, the famous 'fifty sounds table' (五十音図 - gojûonzu). It doesn't make sense to learn a written language - so famous for its calligraphy - fully ignoring the motoric writing practice of hands and brain.

Same old wheel with the hiragana puzzles developed in the last century (speaking on my own behalf). Beside of English clues there are even more variants made out of the same grid: cryptograms, logicals, puzzlegrams and kana transliterals. Guess what? You don't have to know the Japanese words to solve these variants, just writing ability of the kana will be fine.
Can't stop frowning: The famous jôyô kanji 常用漢字 - students of the Japanese language have to learn them. Yet we should keep in mind what learning really means: keeping our synapses busy to build associations. So - still ignoring the shape of the kanji and learning without topics?

While examining the meaning of the single jôyô kanji to arrange them into groups (= topics for the online kanji match games) I was dumbfounded of the cultural aspects: so many of them representing the history and geography of Japan (e.g. 'mountains', 'water', 'navigation', 'religion', 'money' - more to come). The writing practice sheets and kanji sudoku by shape are references to our synapses :-)

What is a Japanese language related website without kanji desktop wallpapers? Shame, shame, shame - not any longer! Please enjoy 8 calligraphic kanji (美 = beauty, 永 = eternity, 金 = gold, 喜 = joy, 愛 = love, 幸 = luck, 安 = peace, 富 = wealth) and the 12 Chinese zodiac animal signs - each of them with eight different backgrounds.

Great things will happen - hint: mobile solutions. More in one of my next posts
:-)

Special greetings to Peter: Bon Voyage! (He is going to spread the word in Japan with a special edition of Kanji-Sudoku)

# posted by Claus @ 5:45 AM 1 comments

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