From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2004-10-07T09:09:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Bit of the Matz Interview (in Rubyist Magazine)

Hi,

In message "Re: Bit of the Matz Interview (in Rubyist Magazine)"
    on Thu, 7 Oct 2004 08:48:14 +0900, Chad Fowler <chadfowler@gmail.com> writes:

|Matz, if one wanted to learn just enough Japanese to _barely_
|understand what's being discussed on the Japanese mailing lists, which
|of the writing systems would be best to start with?  From what our
|friends at RubyConf told me, _all_ of them are used all of the time. 
|Is that true for the mailing list too?

Do you mean Hiragana, Katakata, and Kanji?

Unfortunately we use all of them (plus Roman alphabets) in our daily
communication.  Lack of any will hinder Japanese understanding very
badly.  I feel sorry, but this time it's not _my_ design mistake.

|My project for next year is to learn Japanese well enough to skim
|through for keywords in the mailing lists (if not more) and to be able
|to speak basically to my family in Japan :)

There are some tools to convert Kanjis into Hiraganas (kakasi, for
example).  It might be help for Japanese beginners.

							matz.