A Chinese friend of mine said recently (I'm paraphrasing here): "What's so hard about learning Japanese? I could read a Japanese newspaper" - meaning that, with so many kanji to give us clues, well, it's a doddle to us Chinese speakers.

Well, up to a point.

I found a site today where you can test yourself on the kanji that are used most frequently in newspapers. Brilliant resource:- Japanese Newspaper Word Frequency List. The questions are multiple-choice, where you see the kanji and choose the meaning from 4 alternatives. For curious, I took the first test. The trouble is, I read the kanji aloud in my head, with Chinese pronunciation. So I know that 首相 means Prime Minister, but I pronounce it 'shouxiang' and have no idea what the Japanese pronunciation should be.

So yes, it's an unfair advantage compared to my class-mates, but still presents a problem. Doubly so, because I don't want to unlearn Chinese while learning Japanese. (Yeah, I know, you'd swap this problem for yours).

Still, I suppose it all adds to the joy and the challenge.

On the underground today, I saw a poster with the word 'bikeathon', and wondered what an ancient Greek would make of it. He'd probably struggle with our concept of marathon, and would need a bit of time with a bicycle before you'd even think of saying "Hey Xenophon, we've got this new Greek word you'll really love!"

I'm beginning to think that Katakana loan words work a bit like that, taking on a life of their own in Japanese and no longer really being English/German etc. Though I hesitate to say it (we're so darn PC here) but セハ is a good example. What English speaker would recognise that without help?