Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな) is one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet (Rōmaji.) Hiragana consists of 46 signs which originally were kanji (Chinese character) but were simplified over the centuries. When looking at a Japanese text, one can clearly distinguish the two kinds of signs: the complicated kanji and the simpler kana signs.

Even though one can theoretically write the whole language in hiragana, it is usually used only for grammatical endings of verbs, nouns, and adjectives, as well as for particles, and several other original Japanese words which are not written in kanji. Hiragana are widely used in materials for children, textbooks, animation and comic books, to write Japanese words which are not normally written with kanji, such as adverbs and some nouns and adjectives, or for words whose kanji are obscure or obselete. Also, if you forget certain kanji which are rarely used, you may substitute hiragana for them.

Hiragana are also sometimes written above or along side kanji to indicate pronunciation, especially if the pronunication is obscure or non-standard. Hiragana used in this way are known as furigana. In horizontal texts, the furigana appear above the kanji and in vertical texts, the furigana appear on the right of the kanji.

Among the syllables are the five vowels (a i u e o). (a), pronounced “ahh”, (i), pronounced like “e” in “eat”, (u), pronounced like “oo” in “soon”, (e), pronounced like “e” in “elk”, and (o), pronounced “oh”. All Hiragana characters end with one of these vowels, with the exception of (n). The rest are syllables combined by one of these vowels with a consonant (ka ki ku ke ko ra ri ru re ro…).

For a list of the Hiragana syllabograms, please refer to the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

Japanese writing has evolved from its original Chinese script beginnings to become something that is intrinsically Japanese. There are actually different types or ways of writing Japanese characters and it has been a source of confusion for people who are not familiar with Japanese culture.

The three ways of writing Japanese characters are Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana, with another version called Romaji being used for special purposed.

The word kanji is a Japanese derivative of the Chinese word hanzi, which translates to “Han characters”. Kanji are not syllabic and are used to represent abstract concepts as well as names and everyday words.

Hiragana are used for words without kanji representation, for words no longer written in kanji. It is a syllabic alphabet. Each Hiragana character represents a sound.

Katakana like hiragana, are a syllabary; katakana are primarily used to write foreign words.

There is also another script used in the Japanese language called Romaji. It is basically used to write the Latin alphabet into Japanese characters, especially for English or Latin alphabet-spelled words that do not have a direct Japanese translation.

The following article by Yvonne Ellis talk more about changing your mental programming with NLP.

Changing Your Mental Programming With NLP

In my last article I introduced Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) as a great tool to use for changing subconscious programming. In this article, I’ll introduce you to Neuro Linguistic Programming (or NLP) and give you an NLP technique you can use yourself to change an unwanted or unproductive program or eliminate an unwanted habit.

NLP was developed in the early 1970′s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. “Neuro” refers to the way information is processed by the mind through the senses; “linguistic” refers to the way we use language to communicate our experiences to ourselves and others; and “programming” describes how the brain codes experiences to create personal programs that determine our ways of being and behaving in the world.

In other words, NLP is a way to describe precisely how people perceive experiences, represent them to themselves, communicate them to others, and encode them within their brain. Understanding this process makes it possible to change an experience or replicate someone else’s experience. How NLP is mostly used (outside of a therapeutic setting) is in studying and replicating (or modelling) personal excellence. It is a tool that is widely used in business and personal development.

NLP is extremely effective in changing subconscious programming whether that is eliminating a belief and installing a new belief, disrupting old disempowering patterns or programs and installing more empowering patterns or programs, turning on and off emotional states at will and eliminating conflict within yourself.

The downside with NLP is that it does require training in order for you to be truly effective in using many of the processes and, because much of what we say and do is out of conscious awareness, it can be more difficult to use NLP on yourself. For example, if you were to ask a highly successful business person how they succeeded, they probably couldn’t give you a precise answer. They most likely don’t even know, consciously, what made the difference and therefore are unable to articulate it. Similarly, we often aren’t aware, at a conscious level, of how we sabotage ourselves – only that we do.

The key to success or failure then is often unknown at the conscious level. That’s why an athlete can be sensational one time and fail the next, even though their preparation was, on the surface, exactly the same. Dig a little deeper, however, using NLP, and the differences start to emerge that explain the contrast in results. Eliciting these unknown pieces of the puzzle is sometimes referred to as the ‘magic of NLP’ although, of course, it’s not magic at all. Once elicited, you can ‘interrupt’ the sabotaging program that was running and change the end result.

The brain processes information and stores our life experiences using our five senses. When we later remember those experiences we do so using our five senses again. That is why, if you remember or imagine biting into a lemon, you ‘see’, ‘smell’ and ‘taste’ the lemon even though it’s only happening in your mind. In NLP these senses are called modalities and there are three main ones: visual (seeing), auditory (hearing) and kinaesthetic (feeling). Our other two senses, olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) are a part of the kinaesthetic modality. Most people have a preference for and operate primarily from one main sensory modality.

Here is an NLP process that you can easily use on yourself.

The Swish Pattern

The swish pattern allows you to ‘rewire’ an old response by programming in a new response to the same trigger. It re-programs the mind to respond in a new and positive way to a situation that previously resulted in unwanted thoughts, behaviours and emotions. It can be used on everything from stopping habits like nail-biting or smoking to changing perspectives on situations like cold call selling (eg from dislike to ease or enjoyment) and changing behaviours like yelling at the people you love, acting like a doormat instead of standing up for yourself, or compulsively replaying old memories in your head that make you feel bad. Here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Identify what it is that you want to change eg stop biting your nails.

Step 2: Identify the Cue Picture. What do you actually see just before you start doing the unwanted behaviour? Since a lot of behaviours happen on ‘autopilot’ it might help to actually do whatever you do just before you start the unwanted behaviour eg move your hand towards your mouth just as you would if you were about to bite your nails. What do you see/hear/sense? This is your Cue picture.

Step 3: Create a Desired Outcome picture. How would you see yourself differently if you had already made the change that you desire. Not just longer fingernails – what would be the value of changing this? What difference would it make to you as a person? How would it change your self-image? How would that all look/sound/feel like? Create a picture of that New You, the you that you would be if you no longer had this habit, behaviour or feeling. See yourself in the picture as though you were watching a movie and adjust the image until you feel really drawn to it. Increase the brightness, size and distance of the image and add in desirable qualities like confidence, assertiveness, inner power and kindness etc until you find it really compelling.

Step 4: Swish the two pictures. Start with seeing the Cue Picture, big and bright. Then put a small, dark image of your Desired Outcome in the lower left corner. Now as you say ‘swish’ allow the Cue Picture to get dimmer and smaller and further away and at the same time allow the small dark picture (your Desired Outcome) to grow big and bright until it completely covers the Cue Picture and fills the screen of your mind. You do this very quickly – in less than a second – the time that it takes to say swish. Now open your eyes. Repeat this process a total of five times making sure you open your eyes in between each swish.

Step 5: Test. Now try and picture the Cue Picture This should be hard to do as it will tend to be replaced by your Desired Outcome picture. Alternatively, try to trigger the behaviour eg lift your hand as though to bite your nails. If the old behaviour is still there, go back and swish some more and add more sensory elements to your images to make them compelling.

The Cue Picture should feel unpleasant since this is a behaviour you wish to change and the Desired Outcome should feel really attractive. The keys to a successful swish are speed and correctly identifying the trigger or Cue Picture. Happy swishing!

NLP Tips For Parents

NLP provides parents with a great toolkit for helping their children learn, get along with others, and opt in to positive states. Using exactly the same techniques and principles they would apply to working with adults, parents get great results. As a bonus, they also get a chance to share the positive states their children experience. It’s a win-win!

All NLP techniques are grounded in the fact that human beings experience life as a series of continuous, unified states. Our minds, bodies, emotions, beliefs, knowledge and memories are all present and active simultaneously. Our neurology links every part of us that is active at a particular moment so that we create life as a flow and not as a discontinuous assortment of data.

Parents are often amazed at the ease with which children move from one state to another. A three year old who is howling one moment can be giggling the next. A teenager with nothing to say to her parents can be overflowing with words when her cell phone rings. Children are experts at changing states.

As parents, our first job is to notice the state that our children are in and to notice the benefits of this state. It often seems that the easier it is to notice the state, the harder it is to find benefits in it. Yet recognizing that even very small children have good reasons for bad behaviour is an enormous jump on changing that behaviour with relatively little stress.

In order to really appreciate the state your child is in, you need to observe the way your child observes: using all your senses and quite a bit of your physiology. You need to become a mirror of your child’s expressions, movements and postures. As you take on his/her physical characteristics, you will learn something of his/her internal experience.

Try it. Join your child in an activity and instead of teaching him/her how you do it, learn how s/he does it. Pay attention to every aspect of his/her movement, gestures, shifting attention and expression. See how precisely you can replicate them. Notice what changes in your feelings and perceptions as you take on the characteristics of your child’s state. Ask yourself: “what are the benefits of this state?”

When you identify a state as positive for the child (and possibly for you, too!), then you anchor that state. Anchoring means associating a state with a physical stimulus. If your child is engaged in a physical activity, elements of that activity will already be anchored to that state. If you want to transfer the state to other contexts, try anchoring the state to a particular word, touch or facial expression. Practice reinforcing the anchor whenever you notice that state as your child engages in the same or different activities.

What if your child enters a state that you don’t believe is positive? Your first goal is to replicate aspects of the state in yourself so that you can notice its benefits. This means watching a tantrum and noticing how powerful you feel as you scrunch your face, shake your head or bang your fist repeatedly. Or it might mean noticing how interesting it is to move your attention very rapidly from one thing to another – noticing how it changes your relationship to what is around you. It’s always valuable to accept that states have benefits for the people engaged in them – even when they don’t seem beneficial.

The goal of the exercise is not usually to leave the state unchanged, but to find a way to change it that preserves some elements of its benefits. Once you have a great read on your child’s state, you can change it by interrupting it, by firing resource anchors, or by helping your child move into a more positive physiology.

Last, but certainly not least, you can share stories with your child to establish a connection with his/her state and then transform it. Telling stories together invites you to share your voice, rhythms and expressions with your child – whether you are doing the telling or the listening. The point of the story is not to get the story right – it’s to get the best transformation into a shared, positive state. Stories are a natural technique for observing, engaging, connecting and transforming. Your kids will benefit – and so will you.

Linda Ferguson, Ph.D. is a senior partner at NLP Canada Training Inc. in Toronto, Canada. With her partner, Chris Keeler, Linda develops training that allows people to experience stronger integrity and better results. Clients experience rapid, sustainable change and long-term learning about how their thinking drives success. Drawing on fields from the arts to business to neuroscience, NLP Canada Training Inc. provides spring-training for the mind: clients sharpen their perceptions, focus their efforts, and become better at knowing what they want and communicating to get it. Read more from Linda at http://www.nlpcanada.com or http://www.squidoo.com/integratedthinking or http://www.nlpcanadatraining.blogspot.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Ferguson

I have been attending some of the free tuition classes offered by community volunteer groups during my primary and secondary school time. I also have the opportunity to be one of the volunteer teacher then.


It is my dream to setup an education center that can provide free tuition to everyone who need it one day. I still do not have any concrete plan yet, but I think setting up a blog here to take notes about this project will help me in materializing it one day in the near future.

Helping the Children by Providing Free Education

Children are the future of every country. They need attention and care, no matter whichever family they are coming from. Special attention is needed to be paid to kids coming from economically backward families. But the cause of the children takes a backseat often before the governments (especially in the third world countries where the governments have to deal with thousand of humanitarian problems). However, if the state administration neglects it that does not mean that we also neglect it. Individuals need to come forward with the willingness to work for the cause of helping the children.

How one should go about helping the children, especially those coming from economically backward families? The first thing that should be done is to help them get and complete quality education. Once this procedure is started every other thing becomes easier. As our social and professional institutions value the education most when one starts earning one’s living. If you have got the proper educations then one have all the opportunities in the world to have a decent living. So, it will be the best way of helping the children to establish such schools where the children of the poor people will be provided free education.

For realizing this plan for real, charitable organizations need to be established where those people who have got everything in life needs to make their contribution to work for helping the children. And with these contributions the organizations need to fund or establish schools to make the education and the entire infrastructure to support the education of the poor children absolutely free. Along with teaching the modern subjects, the children need to be given all the ethical and moral education so that they do not grow up into culturally devoid adults.

This simple way of helping the children by making available to them proper education, will help in building a healthy society and eradicating poverty. Make your contribution to Guru Nanak Garib Niwaj Education Society, which is working for achieving the same goal.

Sanjeev Jha is a researcher and writer. He provides valuable information about Education Society, Helping Children, Social Service and many more topics.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sanjeev_Jha

Free Online Education – Do They Really Exist?

The cost of a higher education is outrageous these days. The price of going to college is so steep that thousands are unable to go because they cannot afford it. Even if people can afford to go to college many are not because they do not see the point in spending all the money to continue education but they should reconsider. Many of the universities and colleges are now offering a free online education sample to try and encourage kids to get online degrees.

Now, just because a college is offering a free online education sample does not mean that they are offering free online degrees. The colleges are offering a free sample to get your attention and to see if you like it and if you do then you have to pay tuition fees to continue taking online classes. Here are some colleges and universities that offer free online courses:

-Eagle Forum University- This university offers a basic free online education about the American government and it’s history. These courses are great for anyone who wants a brief history of the US.

-The University Of Washington- This university probably has the best online education you can access for free. They have a program called UW Educational Outreach which is a program that tries to get as many kids to pursue a college education as possible. The reason this is the best online education for free is because it covers a wide variety of courses from World War II to HTML basics. If you are debating about going to a college, try out this online education and you will most likely be convinced to further your education at one of the colleges.

-Lancaster University- If you are interested in computers this British University is offering online courses, for free, on basic computer language and web authoring subjects. If you want to get into the world of the internet go to this universities site.

-Brigham Young University- The final university also offers a wide variety of subjects that you are able to take online for free. Some of the topics you could take are family history, religious scripture study (covering the Mormon religion), and family life. These are just some of the basic free online courses you are able to take.

The thing you need to know before pursuing a free online education is that the courses do not count as credit and they do not count as courses you can use as part of a degree. The courses are meant to attract you to go to college which they will do if you take them.

Lester Lee is the webmaster of http://www.EightTips.com – a popular website that provides expert advice and great tips on Free Online Education. Visit our site today for more helpful information about innovation in Education and other similar topics.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lester_Lee