Saturday, February 12, 2011

Lesson 1 Appendix

Now that I've read through my previous post, I noticed there are still some things left to explain, which I've missed last time beacause I'm too used to them and kind of take them for granted by now. That being the pronunciation of the kana a, i, u, e and o, and all the other kana they are part of. Although not by much, their pronunciation differs from that in English.

The kana a is pronaunced like the A in After. 

The kana i is pronaunced like the I in Image.

The kana u is pronaunced like the OUGH in thrOUGH or the OO in mOO.

The kana e is pronaunced like the E in Ever.

And lastly, the kana o is pronaunced..... well, pretty much as it is in English, only little shorter - it isn't the English oh, but a shorter and clean O.

Well, that covers just about everything about the pronunciation. Another thing you might have been wondering about is how the Japanese spell words with consecutive consonants, since all their kana end with a vowel, and exept for the occasional n, all the words must be follow the pattern (vowel) -consonant - vowel - consonant -vowel and so on, with the possible addition of any number of vowels in betweem, since unlike consonats, single vowels do exits in Japanese. Well, they is no way to group a number of consonants together - the Japanese spell such words with a number of added vowels in between - for example the word Berserk; in Japanese that would be spelled beruseruku(that's the name of a nice manga, you can check it out if you're into fantasy/horror, be warned, though, it's pretty gory).

You might also have noticed that some letters are completely missing in the table, not even being present as part of syllables - such as v, b, l  and many others. Some of them might be obtained from the kana in the table (we're going to cover this in the next lesson),  but others simply don't exist - such as L.  The Japanese language simply doesn't have that sound. Japanese always use  R instead, which causes many funny mistakes when they try to write a word in English - their use of  L and R is pretty much random, so you can often see on Japanese signs words like erebator, toiret or lestroom - such spelling mistakes and silly translations in general are know as Engrish.

Since I've started babbling on about random stuff now I will end this post for now before I say something stupid ;) Next will be Lesson 2.

36 comments:

  1. again a great post, a little long but i managed. its harder than i first thought. good post though!

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  2. I'm glad you're trying to share the knowledge. Good job.

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  3. Just remember, we need to start with the very basics. The alphabet and phonics are a great start.

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  4. I've always wanted to learn Japanese, although I'm using Rosetta Stone.

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  5. Thanks! Im going to be looking forward to your other updates hopefully this will teach me Japanese better.!

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  6. good work. very helpful information

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  7. I just hope that you wont give up any time soon. It will come handy, reaaaally handy

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  8. Complicated, but for me it's a bit easier because letters are spelled similary to my mother language

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  9. The last two posts were very informative, thank you.

    I think you have made it fairly simple to understand, which is wonderful for the laymans.

    Looking forward to new posts, I want to learn more about Kanji.

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  10. Thanks for the lesson, Japanese is such an interesting language

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  11. This is actually really helpful, I have a friend who wants to learn Japanese.
    I'll redirect him to this blog.

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  12. Your blog looks promising. Japanese language seems pretty hard though...

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  13. I know three languages, and this one seems like the hardest language to learn ive ever seen.

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  14. Blog looks promising so far.
    Cant wait for more!!

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  15. Japanese seems so difficult to learn. Three different alphabets? That's insane.

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  16. Gonna use my Japanese to pick up Japanese chicks lol :p whos in?

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  17. You need to start with Kanji. its the only way.

    hehe. jk. I learned some japanese in high school, took 3 years of it. Forgot most of it by now though, its been a few years for me, so maybe you can refresh my memory?

    Definetly be following you closely.

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  18. good info man, ill deff be following

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  19. You could also point out that the vowels are kind of pronounced that spanish vowels. That would help some people.

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  20. my mouth tied itself in a knot trying to pronounce the simplest of words in japanese, perhaps it was not meant to be for a polish guy like me.

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  21. Man again an excellent post im loving it

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  22. You are great. I'll want to learn Japanese so you are help me very much.

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  23. as an manga/anime fan i would like to learn this language buts its tooooo complicated

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  24. I love how phonetic japanese is.

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  25. Awesome, looking forward to the next lesson!

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  26. I love this blog, so easy to pick it up

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