Japanese Lesson 2 - Kanji
When my Japanese colleagues are unable to tell me something in English they would sometimes write it out in Kanji (Chinese characters). However I can't read Chinese. Being that such characters are a part of the written language of the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese, it would be benificial to know how to read and write Kanji if one wishes to communicate. I see the great benefit in Kanji's ability to span the spoken languages of these three people groups and the many spoken languages among the Chinese people alone.

There is an interesting difference in the Chinese and Japanese pronounciation of Kanji characters. In Chinese, each character represents one word and one syllable. In Japanese, the same character has nearly the same meaning but it may be pronounced with up to four syllables. (I'm not sure how it is in Korean.)