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.
This was site view 12,732 of our new website at joyo96.org
The katakana combination クォ occurs in loanwords only, as a representation of the sound sequence k + w + o. This combination will be symbolized by kwo in romanization.
Example: ラテンクォーター ratenkwootaa 'Latin Quarter'
In the less innovative variety of Japanese, クオ kuo (i.e., two syllables) occurs instead.
When katakana ウ is followed by a reduced vowel symbol ィ、ェ、 or ォ, it is assumes the consonantal value of the w- of wa. Thus, while ワ is equivalent to romanized wa both in native Japanese words and loanwords, ウィ、ウェ、ウォ represent wi, we, wo which occur only in loanwords. In the less innovative variety of Japanese, ウイ ui, ウエ ue, ウオ uo - all two-syllable sequences - occur instead. A long u vowel (ウー) continues to be the correspondence for English 'w' + 'u' (as in 'wool', 'woman', etc.).
"...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.
