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<center>KanaLearn</center>

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<b>What is KanaLearn ?</b>
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KanaLearn is a program to study the Japanese alphabets (hiragana and katakana).
It consists of 3 modes: "memorize" to learn the characters, "recognize" to test
your knowledge, and "reorder" to check if you know the order in which the kana
appear in the Japanese alphabets.   


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<b>How does it work ?</b>
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<u>The Memorize page</u>
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This page allows you to display the hiragana and katakana alphabets.
Each alphabet consists of a basic set of characters, the gojūon, which can be
modified in various ways.
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By adding a dakuten marker (゛), unvoiced consonants such as k or t are turned
into voiced consonant such as g or d: k→g, t→d, s→z, and h→b. 
Kana beginning with an h can also add a handakuten marker (゜), which will
change the h to a p. 
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A small version of the kana for ya, yu or yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may
be added to kana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide
palatalization. The addition of the small y kana is called yōon.
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Gojūon, dakuten, handakuten and yōon characters are displayed in the
Memorize page. One can switch between the hiragana and the katakana character
sets by using the radio buttons, and the corresponding rōmaji can also be
displayed (rōmaji uses the latin alphabet to write the kana and is helpful for
beginners).
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<u>The Recognize page</u>
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This page basically is a quiz. A kana is displayed and you have to choose
the corresponding character in another alphabet. There are 5 possible choices.
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The alphabets can be selected amongst hiragana, katakana, rōmaji and random.
With the checkboxes, you can also choose to be tested on the gojūon only, or to 
include the (han)dakuten and yōon too.
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<u>The Reorder page</u>
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This page tests your knowledge of the order in which the kana appear in the
Japanese alphabet. 
With the combobox, you can select which alphabet you want to reorder, between
hiragana, katakana, the rōmaji equivalents, or even a random mix of all that.
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<b> Download</b><br><br>
Click here to <a href="downloads/KanaLearn.zip">download KanaLearn</a>. You just need to unzip the file and the program is ready.
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<b>What is next ?</b><br><br>
This is version 1.0 of KanaLearn. 
I don't intend to have it evolve into something much bigger.
Future extensions to the program may include the display of an animation that
shows how the character should be drawn, and another page to write words 
presented in rōmaji in kana.
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