Verily, children of the ‘JATT. Let it be known unto thee that the AJATT Golden Kwanzaa Key of Uncommercialized Righteousness offer…or whatever the heck it’s freaking called…ends today. You’ve had time to think. Now it’s time to act. Not for me. For you. For your own good.

As you no doubt recall, the Kwanzaa Key entitles you to a 50% discount — half-motherloving-price — on all original AJATT Store digital products, as well as two non-AJATT products — Benny the Irish Polyglot‘s Language Hacking Guide: LHG and John “L2Mastery” Fotheringham’s Master Japanese: Self-Guided Immersion for the Passionate Language Learner.

AJATT Store products get their prices raised periodically, so you always save by acting early. There will be other deals, but none this sweet. Also, as I’ve mentioned previously, John and Benny, while good people on the inside, are also miserly bastards who hate giving big, fat, waddling discounts. AJATT is the only place in the known Universe where you can get a discount of this magnitude — if at all — on their products.

All you have to do to get in on this action…is join AJATT Plus today, before 2010 ends. Don’t you see? This massive discount is just one of the many benefits of being an AJATT Plus member. I’m such a good person.

You’re probably wondering “what’s with all the impure non-AJATT stuff?”. I feel your confusion. Let me tell you a little about these things.

The Language Hacking Guide: LHG

I can remember it like it was yesterday. I asked Benny, an Hibernian purveyor of human tongues, to give me an exclusive LHG discount that I could pass on to you AJATTeers; he turned around to face me, squinted, curled his upper lip and said:

“Like fekken shyte I will! Over my dead Doblin body, Khatzumoto. As long as lime-green Irish blood courses through these vains, I will never discount my products by 50 effen percent!”

And I was like: “Benjamin, are you even from Dublin?”

And he was all: “Well it’s the only reference you’ll onderstand that alliterates with ‘dead’, isn’t it Khatz?”

To which I retorted: “Fair enough, but you misspelled ‘veins’…is…is that an Irish thing, too?…Like the teabags? And Lucky Charms?”

Benny [menacingly]: “Oh, you’ll pay dearly for that one, Khatzumoto. You’ll pay dearly.”

Exit stage left.

Anyway, yeah, so Benny got really emotional, but in the end I just plied him with…I dunno…what’s another vicious Irish stereotype?…Guinness…and made him sign a legally binding agreement to give you, soon-to-be members of AJATT Plus, a massive 50% discount on his masterpiece, LHG: The Language Hacking Guide, a product that distills his 7 years of experience pwning languages into a convenient electronic package.

Alcoholism and leprechauns, baby. World peace…one abusive post at a time.

In bullet-point brief, the LHG is

• A ~200-page PDF ebook, that also includes
• An exclusive audio interview with me, Khatzumoto
• Hours of interviews with other, admittedly less handsome, “language gurus” (as they insist on being called)
• Free access to updates (new chapters, improvements, extra interviews),
• Multiple, FULL native translations of the guide, so you can get real language exposure
  • Yes, there is an awesome Japanese translation of  the guide that’s being produced by an RL friend of mine (we used to work together at Sony 😉 ). This Japanese translation will be released in March; when it comes out, you’ll get it for free as an update.

Moving swiftly on…

Master Japanese: Self-Guided Immersion for the Passionate Language Learner

John‘s guide, while also rhotic, skips over the bubbliness and EU baggage of Benny’s ¹.

What I love about John’s guide is how detailed it is, clocking it at 162 dense pages. John has the patience — that I don’t! —  to really take you by the hand and walk you through the resources you will need. If I were clueless and confused as to how and where to approach a self-directed Japanese learning project, I’d definitely want something like this that laid all the tools out in one place.

Experienced geeks like me tend to lose sight of how bewildering a new language and electronic resources can be. John has not lost that sympathy for the beginner; John wants to help you, where I want to avert my gaze from your suffering and assume that you’re an anime/computer geek who already knows where everything is, owns all kinds of media and other Japanese artifacts, and just needed advice on how to use them better.

Highlights of John’s guide include:

• The cartoon ninja logo. I cannot overstress this.
• The 162-page ebook (of course), beautifully formatted and packed with actionable information.
• Video tutorials. Video, baby.
• Interviews. Hardcore. Interviews.
  • Yet another exclusive audio interview with me, the Khatzumoto
    • I know what you’re thinking: “how exclusive can Khatzumoto interviews be if he’s forever willing to jump onto Skype, spread his lips wide open and have social intercourse with anyone who asks nicely?” ². Well…I do write far more than I talk and the discussions are free-wheeling and off the cuff — think of it as the hour-long AJATT podcasts you wish you had. I know you’ll enjoy them.
  • An even more exclusive interview with Dr. James W. Heisig himself. Yes. The man. The academic mastermind behind this rampant Japanese literacy that’s been going around.
  • More interviews with other hotshots, like Dr. Jay Rubin (Making Sense of Japanese).

In Closing

Would I rather you bought only AJATT products? Yes. But if you’re going to betray me and leave me all Natalie Imbrugliaed, hypothermic and disrobed on the floor…then you can’t really go wrong with John and Benny.

Anyway, that’s all from me for now. Go here to find out more and take advantage of this…amazing ³…offer 😉 .