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)
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)
