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README File for NihonGO! Japanese Kana Learning Program
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Word Count: 2,160 words

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Introduction:
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Program and README by Charles Wetzel

This is the README file for NihonGO!, the Japanese hiragana and katakana quiz program (with accompanying hiragana and katakana resource files) for the TI-83 Plus and above. I hope you enjoy my program.

This program accomplishes the following:

- It allows the user to learn hiragana and katakana (the two main phonetic writing systems in Japanese) through quizzes and tests. The program returns a score to the user so the user can know how he did on the quiz or test.

- It includes prgmHIRAGANA and prgmKATAKANA, which are resource files for displaying Japanese text on the screen of the TI-83. They are required to run the quiz program, but can also be used on their own if you decide to use them to write another Japanese-language program.

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System Requirements:
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- The programs occupy almost 11K of memory, so it's a memory hog, but that's the beauty of Flash ROM!

- TI-83 Plus for the quiz program, the hiragana and katakana resource files MIGHT work with an original 83, but I'm not guaranteeing it. The reason for the poor compatibility with the TI-83 original is that the original TI-83 could not display big, home screen-style letters on the graph screen via Text(-1,x,y,"BLAH BLAH BLAH"). I could have made the program to work with small text, but I felt it looked better with large text, and think the user base of TI-83 users is now pretty small.

- Plenty of time, because the whole thing is written in TI-BASIC, and in spite of my best efforts, is quite slow.

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How to Use It:
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Installation:
1. Send prgmHIRAGANA, prgmKATAKANA, and prgmNIHONGO to the calculator.
2. Run prgmNIHONGO.
3. Choose INSTALL after running NIHONGO to install the kana tables. That way, the kana tables will be stored as Pic1 and Pic2, and will not need to be constantly redrawn (which takes forever).
4. Choose QUIZ for focused practice, or TEST for general practice.

Using NihonGO!:
*QUIZ
This lets you quiz yourself on certain types of kana (for example, all the hiragana in the m row, such as ma, mi, mu, me, and mo). This is useful for people who are first learning kana.
*LEARN/NOTES
This is the reference section of the program. You can view the kana tables, view archaic kana, etc. Please note that before you view the kana tables, you must use "INSTALL" on the main menu.
*INSTALL
This installs the hiragana and katakana tables. If not run, trying to view the kana tables will cause the program to crash.
*CREDITS
Selecting this tells you who made the program.
*EXIT
This quits.

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How the Japanese Writing System Works and How to Start
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***WARNING***
Although this program is great for quizzing yourself on kana, especially on the go or at school, I recommend using it for quizzing only and not to teach yourself the concepts involved in reading kana, because there are many complexities in the way kana are used that are best learned from a textbook or class. The quiz program and this README are good for quizzing yourself to make sure you remember, but neither serves as a Japanese literacy primer. Read a tutorial or book on the hiragana and katakana, and reinforce your learning by quizzing yourself with this program.

In other words, I'll give you this analogy: you can quiz yourself on the times tables to memorize them well, but you couldn't just give a times table quiz program to a four-year-old and expect that four-year-old to understand what he was doing without first telling him what multiplication is!
***END OF WARNING***

Japanese is composed of 46 hiragana in current use, 46 katakana in current use, and kanji. This program only covers the former two systems, and omits kanji, because there are thousands of kanji and kanji generally take years to learn.

This program is suitable for those starting out in Japanese -- maybe Japanese 101 or 102 in college. It can teach you the hiragana (used for writing native Japanese and Sino-Japanese words) and katakana (generally used for foreign words).

Basically, just memorize the kana, and when you see them on paper, pronounce them exactly the way you learned them with this program. There are a few guidelines to keep in mind, though:

- There are times when a hiragana or katakana is followed by two small strokes that look like ". The kana, in this case, undergo the following transformations:
ka + " = ga
ki + " = gi
ku + " = gu
ke + " = ge
ko + " = go

sa + " = za
shi + " = ji
su + " = zu
se + " = ze
so + " = zo

ta + " = da
chi + " = dji (pronounced ji, I just wrote dji to differentiate it from shi + ")
tsu + " = dzu (pronounced zu, I just wrote dzu to differentiate it from tsu + ")
te + " = de
to + " = do

ha + " = ba
hi + " = bi
fu + " = bu
he + " = be
ho + " = bo

- There are times when a hiragana or katakana is followed by a small circle that looks like o. The small circle modifies the h-row kana:
ha + o = pa
hi + o = pi
fu + o = pu
he + o = pe
ho + o = po

- If you see a small "tsu" kana, it means double the consonant in front of it.

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How to Program with prgmHIRAGANA and prgmKATAKANA
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I doubt anyone will want to do this, but if you're interested, this is how:
1. Create a list called JP.
2. Set JP(1) to the character that you want (see following list of characters).
3. Set JP(2) to the x-coordinate.
4. Set JP(3) to the y-coordinate.
5. Run prgmHIRAGANA for hiragana, or prgmKATAKANA for katakana.

Example Program:

prgmTEST
:ClrDraw
:0->LJP(1)    // hiragana = 0 ('a')
:0->LJP(2)    // x = 0
:62->LJP(3)   // y = 62
:prgmHIRAGANA // Calls the hiragana generation subroutine.
This program generates the hiragana 'a' at (0, 62), which is the upper-left hand corner of the screen.

Alternatively, the program could be shortened as follows:
:ClrDraw
:{0,0,62}-LJP
:prgmHIRAGANA

List of Characters:

Archaic Kana and Formatting:
-3 (blank space)
-2 we (archaic, no longer used in modern Japanese, normally)
-1 wi (archaic, no longer used in modern Japanese, normally)

Normal Kana:
0 a
1 i
2 u
3 e
4 o

5 ka
6 ki
7 ku
8 ke
9 ko

10 sa
11 shi
12 su
13 se
14 so

15 ta
16 chi
17 tsu
18 te
19 to

20 na
21 ni
22 nu
23 ne
24 no

25 ha
26 hi
27 fu
28 he
29 ho

30 ma
31 mi
32 mu
33 me
34 mo

35 ra
36 ri
37 ru
38 re
39 ro

40 ya
41 yu
42 yo

43 wa
44 wo

45 n

Kana-Modifying Symbols:
46 the symbol that converts k->g, etc.
47 the symbol that converts h row kana to p kana

Small Kana:
48 small ya
49 small yu
50 small yo
51 small tsu
52 horizontal line, generally used with katakana
53 small a
54 small i
55 small u
56 small e
57 small o

Punctuation Marks (only available in prgmHIRAGANA):
58 Japanese opening quotation mark
59 Japanese closing quotation mark
60 dot
61 question mark
62 Japanese comma
63 Japanese period

=========
About Me:
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E-mail, MSN: charleshenrywetzel@hotmail.com
Web Site: http://www.geocities.com/charleshenrywetzel/Programs.htm

My name is Charles Wetzel, I'm 22, way too old to be programming TIs, and I have an interest in Japan and Asia in general. Growing up, I lived in Asia for five years (two in Korea and two in Hong Kong because my dad was a Foreign Service Officer). When I was 19, I decided America was too boring, so I earned a whole bunch of money working at 7-Eleven and so forth and left and moved to Korea in 2006 (and it's 2009, and I'm still here). I've done a bunch in Korea -- I graduated from Yonsei University Korean Language Institute, did my CELTA English teacher training, completed many college courses via distance learning, etc. However, I'd really like to move to Japan. So I'm working on my IT degree and hoping to move next year, teaching English at first, then slowly working my way into a programming job as my language and programming skills improve.

My Japanese skills aren't all that great, but at least they're existent -- I passed JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 4 and hope to pass the next level at the end of the year. Anyways, I wrote this program mostly during high school and hope people enjoy it.

As for my programming, this is probably going to be my last TI release. I said that the last time, too, but this is different because this is not a new program, just something I decided to clean up and release. Anyways, I'm currently taking a Win32 programming course at the Game Institute, and have finished the midterm of C++ Programming for Game Developers - Module II and should soon be able to write some decent Windows games. I already wrote one game for Windows (that runs in the console), but it has crude, tiled graphics. So I'll probably start doing more Windows programming from now on.

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The Long and Tortured Development History:
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- The development of this program started when I was living in Hong Kong. I wrote a whole bunch more code when I moved back to the US. However, I did not add the finishing touches until I'd moved back to Asia, where I am now -- Korea.

- 2001: Yes, this whole saga started in 2001, about eight years ago! That's a long development time for a TI-83 program, isn't it? I started the project by learning hiragana and katakana via online tutorials. I decided it would be nice to quiz myself via a calculator program (I had a calculator for eighth grade algebra, so it was convenient). I started feeding the hiragana and katakana into the calculator, line-by-line and pixel-by-pixel by looking VERY CLOSELY at a Japanese Game Boy Pokemon game I had on hand. I worked very hard on the program, and had great ambitions for it -- I actually wrote something called "WIMP OS" that I intended as a shell for running Japanese text-using TI-83 programs. I originally hoped to allow several program slots, and other programmers could program things that used my meticulously-assembled hiragana and katakana resource files. I planned to release this OS on ticalc.org along with two bundled programs -- a Japanese quiz program (now NihonGO!) and a program called VIEWER8, which would allow the viewing of Japanese text documents on the calculator (I intended to have a PC converter to convert text documents into TI-83 Plus strings). Anyways, I worked really hard on my project, and had WIMP OS operational on September 11, 2001 (yes, the terrorist attacks happened the same day).

- Between 2001 and 2009: I eventually wrote myself into circle of insanity! The program became just too complicated, I had a girlfriend to worry about, and I wanted the OS/quiz program/8-bit text viewer to be perfect, which made this project too difficult to finish. So I decided to quit, and for almost eight years, did not touch it at all. In fact, I didn't realize I still had a copy of it.

- 2009: I discovered a fairly up-to-date build of it that I'd posted on my web drive way back in '03. I decided "maybe it would be cool if I just released the quiz program and the hiragana and katakana resource files, since I already did the work." So I pared the files down to just three -- prgmNIHONGO, prgmHIRAGANA, and prgmKATAKANA, and am releasing those. So basically, the "operating system" and the VIEWER8 text viewer program are gone, because honestly, I don't think anyone would want to use those slow programs, since the hiragana and katakana resource files were written in 100% TI-BASIC, and since then, people like Yuki Mio have released much faster Japanese font packs written in assembly. Anyways, I hope my users enjoy my quiz program, and maybe someone will use the resource files to make something else cool.

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EULA (End User License Agreement):
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This program is basically released into the public domain, except:

- Removing any instance of "Charles Wetzel" is prohibited. I need to receive credit for my work.

- This program is not for sale, it is meant to be free. Not that anyone would pay money for this, anyway.