PEC Business Japanese Lessons


Version 1.05 (D)

July 1994


A Newton MessagePad Software By Wendy and Manabu Tokunaga


FOR REGISTRATION INFORMATION PLEASE SEE THE END OF THIS DOCUMENT.


Thank you for trying PEC Business Japanese Lessons.  As a business 
person myself, all of the phrases in here are based on my actual 
experience guiding American business executives to meeting tables at 
major Japanese corporations.


Why PEC Business Japanese Lessons:


Also as a software engineer in a medium sized company, I am often 
assigned to "on-the-spot" assignments to visit business partners in  
various countries. So based on my experiences, I thought that having a 
handy training session for the most essential phrases would be useful, 
especially if it was on my Newton along with all the other important 
information I need.


So here are my basic assumptions in designing this software package:


1. As a busy person you probably have no time to learn the writing 
system of the country where you are going to.


2. You probably do not understand when they talk to you in their 
language, but...


3. You will need some essential phrases so that you can get by with 
situations leading up to that important meeting (transportation, 
lodging, food, etc.).


4. The people you are meeting may speak some English, but on some 
important points you need to express your desires in their language to 
make sure that they are understood.


In essence, this is a compact interactive language survival assistant 
that you can carry.  All phrases are the shortest possible to achieve 
the desired effect and are typical phrases that are used in business.


We also think that PEC Business Japanese Lessons can help build basic 
Japanese vocabulary for beginning to intermediate Japanese students. 


Using PEC Business Japanese Lessons:


The software itself is very simple, and it is based on a flash-card 
model. You can go through all the phrases in the database or limit 
them to the topics of interest: Transportation, Food, Lodging, 
General, Shopping, Business and Emergency. 


You can also take advantage of the "scroll" arrows and the "dot" in 
the lower middle of the MessagePad.  The "Up Arrow" will take you to 
the previous screen; the "Down Arrow" will take you to the next screen 
and tapping the "dot" will give you the correct answer. Arrows are 
useful for "fast forward" and "rewind" phrases. To do this, just hold 
the stylus on an arrow for the desired direction. This effect cannot 
be achieved with the main panel buttons.


This software remembers the phrase location and the lesson 
configuration of your last session.




Pronunciation Tips:


At the time of this writing, I was not sure if providing a cassette 
tape that includes all phrases spoken by a native speaker would be 
useful. If so, now would be a good time to speak up and contact us to 
suggest this. Otherwise here are a few basic hints:


1. If you see a consonant and vowel (a,e,i,o,u) together, try to 
pronounce two characters at a time. 


"Makudonarudo (MacDonald)" is pronounced like "Ma Ku Do Na Ru Do". 
This is similar to the Hawaiian pronunciation pattern, eg - "Mahalo, 
Molokini, Kamehameha".


2. Often the vowel sound will stand alone. If this is the case, you 
will see two vowel sound.

For example "auto" in "Chekku auto"  should be pronounced as "a u to".



Note to people who would like to learn more Japanese:


We often get requests about software that teaches the Japanese writing 
system. But before continuing, I would like you to understand the 
magnitude of the task involved to do this both for you and me. 

 In Japanese, there are 3000 or so characters you will need to learn 
for daily survival. It takes a Japanese student up to 9 years of 
primary and secondary school education to master the 3000+ characters. 
Some of you might also have heard of Hiragana and Katakana characters, 
which cover about 100 of the 3000 I've mentioned. Knowledge of these 
characters are definitely the first required step in mastering the 
essential Japanese character sets, but their knowledge alone is 
probably not too useful during your trip to Japan. 


If mastering both reading and writing Japanese is your goal, we highly 
recommend you take classes to learn some basic Japanese writing skills 
from nearby schools or while you are in Japan (if you got a long-term 
assignment).


If you have access to GEnie, the Internet or CompuServe,  you can also 
join many people with Japanese interests on-line. GEnie users can 
visit the Japan RoundTable.  If you have internet USENET news access, 
try "sci.japan.lang" section. CompuServe users can find their JAPAN 
FORUM very useful.  GEnie and CompuServe offer a rich set of software 
libraries that house software that can run on your IBM-PC and 
Macintosh with Japanese language support. We also recommend the 
monthly magazine that comes out of Atlanta Georgia, called Mangajin. 
If you are really interested in how to process Japanese language on 
computers, check out "Understanding Japanese Information Processing" 
by Ken Lunde of Adobe Systems, Inc. and published by O'Reilly & 
Associates, Inc.


REGISTRATION INFORMATION


Now the part I like...


Your "PEC Business Japanese Lessons" Version 1.05D has all the 
features of the registered version internally. While it is un-
registered, you can still try many of the phrases,  I would like to 
tempt you with the fact that there are a lot more interesting and 
useful phrases locked inside. All you need to do is  send us the 
shareware fee payment of only $10.00 US or $12.00 CAN, and if you have 
E-mail or fax, we can quickly upgrade the shareware for you by sending 
the matching keycode.


You can send $10.00 U.S., $12.00 CAN to: 


Pacific Electronic Connection

723 Camino Plaza, Suite 162

San Bruno, CA 94066


IMPORTANT: Please specify Version 1.05D


Presently we are releasing this shareware in the North American market 
only. However, if you live outside North America, please write or E-
mail us to that effect and we will try to deal with each situation as 
flexibly as possible.


On unregistered software, a registration panel will always appear 
first. If you do not wish to register now, press the "Later" button. 
If you have registered and obtain the keycode from us, you can enter 
the keycode and press "Register". Write down the keycode on a separate 
piece of paper in case you need to re-install the software.


I would recommend that you double tap in the key code entry area and 
enter the keycode via the "keyboard". Also there is no need to enter 
the keycode into your Newton personal dictionary.


After entering the keycode, press the "Register" button. If you are 
correctly registered, the panel will be put into the "trash". This 
panel should not appear again until you completely reset your Newton 
or restore old system data back to your Newton from the Newton 
connection kit. If PEC Business Japanese Lessons unregisteres itself 
for this reason or other, try re-entering the keycode again.


If our keycode does not work, you may have typed in the code wrong. 
Check and try again.. If the problem persists, reload the software and 
report the problem to us.


Anyway, your support in terms of this small income is very exciting 
and it is a good incentive for me to write more challenging software. 
So I thank you for your support!



Release Note:


Version 1.05D has fixed a minor logic bug that could have happened at 
the start of the program and in the information panel (neither 
problems were reported by 1.03b users up to this date).


The main window has been made a bit smaller to accommodate the use of 
the MP-110 MessagePad model.


This software has been developed with the Newton Tool Kit and the 
internal application signature of "PECPIE" has been registered with 
Apple Computer Inc.


The lesson engine can be adopted to any flash-card type lessons 
quickly. Please contact us for custom lesson-base versions.


