English and me

A week from last article.
This time, I write the history of how I learned English.

I studied English when I was in a junior and senior high school.
This is very standard thing in Japan.
Most Japanese children study English in a junior and senior high school.
However, the school teach only basic things.
I heard several times that the English Language Education has been growing up recently.
I also studied in University, but I often cut the class.

I played some online games.
Playing games with English speaking people, was very helpful for study communications with natives.
I got some slangs and abbreviations then.
But I would not like to use the slangs.
Because if I use slangs, people who would listen that would think that I must be able to use English well, I think.

Why English?
English is most spoken language over the World.
However, I don't think that English is excellent language. Japanese too. :-)
The culture of English speaking people is most evolved culture, I think.
English has become a common language in many areas on the World.
A lot of online services are provided by English.
This means that I should contact support by English if I would have a problem on the service.
Therefore, I think I should learn English.

Thinking about Katakana

I thought about Katakana since 2nihon asked me on the Twitter why Katakana is used for non foreign words.

Japanese character "Katakana" is often used for loanwords.
But it may also be used for regular Japanese words.
For example, ネコ(cat), ビン(bottle), メガネ(glasses), タンス(chest of drawers), イス(chair), or etc...
Of course Japanese people write these words using Kanji or Hiragana too.

I didn't know why they can be written by Katakana instead of Kanji or Hiragana.
(Or I'd not thought about that.)
If the Kanji is complex, it would be written by Hiragana or Katakana.
But why it could be written by Katakana instead of Hiragana?

In wikipedia,

Katakana are also used for emphasis, especially on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards). For example, it is common to see ココ koko ("here"), ゴミ gomi ("trash") or メガネ megane ("glasses"), and words to be emphasized in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the European usage of italics.

I think this is probably true.
But I don't think the emphasis is for the theme of the sentence.
I think it would be for people to be able to distinguish easily from other Hiragana in the same sentence.
Foreign people may not be able to distinguish Hiragana and Katakana.
But Japanese people can easily to do that.

Here is two sentences. Which is easy to read?

1. "私はめがねを買いに行きます。"
2. "私はメガネを買いに行きます。"

(In English, "I'll go to buy a pair of glasses.")
In 1, Hiragana-Hiragana-Hiragana
In 2, Hiragana-Katakana-Hiragana
2 is more easy to read, I think.
However, this is only my opinion.

And I also guess that Katakana is easier to write than Hiragana, because Katakana is formed from straight lines. :-)

For foreign people who is learning Japanese, you should not think about that.
Because many Japanese can read the word even if it would be written by Kanji or Hiragana instead of Katakana. ;-)
You'll be able to understand that if you would get experienced!

About me

I'm male, about thirty years old Japanese.

I'm using "jaen" for my screen name.

This is not typo of "Jean"! ;-)

I simply joined heads of "Japanese" and "English".

Yes, I didn't do hard thinking about it...

About this blog

I'm a Japanese who learning English.

I'm using Twitter for write in English and conversation with English speaking people.

But Twitter is too narrow to write many. (Only 140 characters they have!)

I think I need more space to write nuance of my thought more correctly.

So I was considering about *standard* blog, and finally I decided to use here.

I'm not bad at reading English, but not good at writing or speaking or hearing.

I hope I could conversation using English as usual.

I write in English using dictionary at times.

I would thank to a person who would correct my wrong English.