Language

Japanese is a very easy language to learn to speak. Japanese has only 5 vowel sounds, compared to over 20 in English

It's only when you start to write in Japanese that it becomes a little more tricky, because there are three different writing systems:

	ê Hiragana	Script used for 'true' Japanese words. Each character represents one syllable
	ê Katakana	Script used for 'words borrowed from another language
	ê Kanji	Chinese characters which each have a unique meaning to help differentiate between Japanese homophones (words which have the same sound but different meanings)

But the good thing is that there are no troubles with spelling in Japanese. Each hiragana syllable only makes one sound, unlike the English alphabet. For example, the letters 'ough' in English are pronounced 6 different ways in the words: trough, thorough, although, through, thought and enough. But the Japanese character か is only ever pronouced ka.

So once you know the Japanese writing system, reading Japanese is a breeze compared to English!

A note about Romaji

ê Romaji is NOT a Japanese writing system. It is a script used to assist people of English-speaking backgrounds in reading Japanese when they have not yet learnt hiragana. Romaji means the 'Roman alphabet' which is the alphabet that we use in Australia. Certain letters from the Roman alphabet have been selected to best represent the sounds of Japanese. When you want to type in Japanese, you will need to type in Romaji and the corresponding hiragana will come up on the screen.