Kanji contains literally thousands of characters. They derive from Chinese characters and are the mainstay of Japanese writing. The pronunciation of a character can change depending upon the context and the adjacent characters. You can find a great animated lesson at this site.

Katakana and hiragana characters represent syllables, not individual sounds. They almost all combine a vowel and a consonant. Hiragana characters are derived from Chinese characters but they are phonetic in nature. Katakana is more modern than hiragana and is used to express what are called “loan” words, words that are directly related to foreign words. A chart of hiragana characters can be seen on the left.

Most Japanese people are also familiar with the roman alphabet and Romaji is what the Japanese call the roman alphabet. It is also used in transliteration and when learning Japanese. It is basically the use of the Latin (or Roman) alphabet to write Japanese language. It is often used when Japanese text is targeted at those who do not know the language, such as names on street signs and in dictionaries and textbooks for foreign students. There are three main systems used, but variants of the Hepburn system are most common. 

All Japanese who have attended elementary school since World War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese. It’s also the most common way to input Japanese into computers or word processors that do not support the display or input of Japanese characters.

Romaji dates back as early as 1548 when Jesuit priests used a system to print Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to ready Japanese. The first modern system was developed by James Curtis Hepburn in the late 19th century. 

sources: grammourpuss, wikipedia

There is an excellent “online etymology dictionary” that will allow you to search for the history of a particular word. Another very interesting site is Behind The Name which has the etymology and history of first names.

Sources: wikipedia

Esperanto has a very regular structure. The language is phonetic and the rules of pronunciation are very simple. Each letter always makes the same sound and spelling is perfectly regular. This makes it easy for everyone to know exactly how to pronounce and write words. It also makes learning the language fairly simple. It can be learned in a fraction of the time it takes to learn other languages. Many “root words” are similar to the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, but Esperanto is not merely a derivative of those languages, it is a completely independent language. 

The language is designed to provide for “neutral” communication, meaning that it helps foster a culture of equality, rights, tolerance and internationalism, since communication does not provide any advantages to members of any particular people or culture.

Here are some interesting aspects of Esperanto:

All nouns end in the letter “o.” (house = domo, cat = kato, city = urbo)

All adjectives end with the letter “a.” (tall = alta, big = granda, new = nova)

To make a noun plural just add a “j.” (domoj, katoj, urboj)

Adding “mal” to the beginning of a word gives it the opposite meaning. (short = malalta, small = malgranda, old = malnova)

The direct object of a sentence is formed by adding an “n” to the end. This lets us change the order of the words without changing the meaning. Here’s an example:

La hundo amas la katon. (The dog loves the cat.)

Here is a fantastic, easy to understand introduction to the Esperanto language.

Here is a great multilingual website where you can learn Esperanto free of charge.

Here are some official web sites:

esperanto.net

esperanto.org