What an Amazing Invention

What an Amazing Invention, September 13, 2008

By	Stephanie Sane (from the Asylum) - See all my reviews

I don't have a cellphone, don't want one, would hate being in a position where anyone could reach out and touch me anytime they wanted. However, I do have an aging ten gig iPod I bought way back when. It's showing it's age, the battery won't hold much of a charge any longer, so it was time for me to upgrade. A Nano, I thought.

But a friend has an iPhone and she showed me the nifty apps you can download. I played around, looking around in the App Store and found Kanji Flip. Okay, no Nano for me, not now. I got a Touch. You see, I was recently given the Rosetta Stone for both Japanese and Chinese . What a challenge, studying two languages, so different from English, at once. And their writing systems are so different. It's one thing to learn to speak, quite another to learn to read and write.

Yes you can do Pinyin and Romanji, but that's writing for foreigners, you wanna learn the language, you gotta learn the written part as well. And that's where the Touch or the iPhone come in. I downloaded Kanji Flip, Japan Flip, a Japanese Dictionary and I'm studying away every chance I get. They have similar little apps to help you with your Mandarin, but I've been working diligently with Japanese for two months now and am having a bit more trouble with Mandarin, though it's only been a month. I've decided to learn the Japanese writing system first, if I can, then tackle the Chinese.

What a chore, I know.

But the Touch isn't only for flashcarding Kana and Kanji, you can stuff it full of music, photos and even watch movies on it and you never have to worry about an annoying phone call interrupting your work or play.

This is quite an invention, this iPod Touch

Reviewed by Stephanie Sane

Apple iPod Touch