Geek begats geek

[pasithea]

Hee! Being semi-literate is fun! Now that I have hiragana and katakana memorized and know a few words I've started on deciphering kanji. An interesting thing about this... Computer programming and video games have given me a pretty sharp pattern matching skill, and chinese is close to a pictorial language. These things combined with the bits of japanese I know are letting me pseudo-read more and more. I won't say I know exactly what each character means or how it's pronounced but I can see the same kana in 4 or 5 different items on a menu and pick out what it generally means (cooking style or type of meat/veggie) and then I can recognize it when I see it elsewhere and it kinda makes me giggle and say, 'Hey! I know this character! It has something to do with hot soup. Maybe it means 'boiled', maybe it means 'clear broth'. When I see it in a few more places I can narrow down its meaning more. :)

So, by sight now, I recognize about 20 kanji characters and know definitively what about half of them mean. This is fun! Learning languages is like a great puzzle game. :)