Mastering Japanese, 10 Compact Disks and fast-paced Textbook. Based on Eleanor Jordan's Yale University curriculum, this program does not lend itself to laziness, but is for those interested in well designed, but tough audio drills.
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A vowel symbol written smaller and lower (further right in vertical texts) than surrounding symbols also indicates that the preceding symbol has its consonant value only. For example, the combination フェ represents a single syllable consisting of the sound symbolized by the h- of hu + the e vowel. This will be indicated in romanization as h(u)e. The more commonly occurring combinations in this category are:
ティ t(e)i ディ d(e)i トゥ t(o)u ドゥ d(o)u チェ t(i)e
シェ s(i)e ジェ z(i)e
ファ h(u)a フィ h(u)i フェ h(u)e フォ h(u)o
"...one-fourth of all the characters used in modern Japanese occur in three-fourths of all the most frequently occurring words. This means that by concentrating on learning approximately 500 select characters, the student is assured of being able to read 75% of all the high-frequency words he will encounter in modern literature." - The Kanji Way to Japanese Language Power.
