The collected works of krfkeith

As the title says, I've decided to take a look at learning some Japanese. Currently, I know English (duh!) which is my first language, Spanish about 75%, Latin (gramatically 100%, but my vocabulary retention is fail), and I've dabbled in French. I decided I was tired of Indo-European languages, and thought I might try something different. I've always wanted to learn an east asian language, and Japanese is perfect for me for a number of reasons.

A) I want to place Policenauts by Hideo Kojima (producer/creator of Metal Gear, enough said!) and its Japanese only
B) Lot's of stuff I want from Yahoo Auctions Japan
C) I want to eventually get an X68000, and while not necessary, it would help
D) I'd like to go to Japan some day
E) I just like the language!

I think languages are really fascinating, and it's really cool to learn something COMPLETELY different from English. Luckily, I've invented my own writing systems before, and memorized those (or atleast HAD memorized them), so I do have some experience in that area. Speaking of which, one of my writing systems was UNCANNILY close to Hiragina! Anyhow, we'll see how I do. Right now I'm trying to master Kana, but from preliminary looks, Japanese grammar appears to be relatively simple compared to say, Latin (perhaps one of the most inflected languages ever, but luckily very uniform). Wish me luck!

Yeah, I remember reading the same thing. Luckily I do have some experience with learning languages to rely on. I'm just really glad I didn't take it in school. The thing is, school's want to get you speaking ASAP, providing you with an incomplete understanding of the language, which is why my Spanish is screwed up. They try to make it easier in the beginning, but in the end, make it all the more confusing. When I learned (learning?) Latin, I just used Wheelock's, but didn't bother focusing on the vocab, and instead tried to master the grammar. Problems in grammar are hard to correct, but you can easily learn more vocab.

Skywriter: I have the same opinion! I live in Texas, so I have PLENTY of Spanish to listen to though. However, with that being said, I have found the Spanish spoken in Spain to sound a LOT better, perhaps it's due to their actual use of proper grammar? Anyhow, I think the main similarity between Spanish and Japanese are the vowels, which brings me to another thing...

For anyone here who is a MGS fan,
I just realized that La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo, is the order of Japanes vowels, cool! I guess in japanese, it would be the "r" sound instead of the L.

I've actually been looking for Snatcher for Sega CD, too bad the Saturn version was Japanese only (may not be a problem soon! heh) Anything coming from Hideo Kojima is gold IMO. (well, not some of the newer stuff, but that another story). As for whether or not Snatcher is better than MGS, I'm not sure, to each his own. I've never played Snatcher, but it looks really good.

I've this bizarre obsession with 68k based UNIX machines, and besides a Crimson (I've already posted a wanted well, post, for one here) one of these IRISes is a "dream machine" for me. Any condition, I'll consider any location since these are considerably rarer than Crimsons. PM me if you can help me out.

Thanks
-Kevin

PDP-11? Lisa? Where?