Friday, February 11, 2011

Lesson 1

After a day of waiting, here comes the first post that actually contains some useful information, so we will call it Lesson 1. Not that much of a lesson, really,  but we need to lay down the ground first, before we move on to the more advanced stuff. And like learning every other language, learning Japanese start with the alphabet, although they don't really have one. As you've read in the intoduction, the Japanese use THREE different writing systems.


HIRAGANA

First is the Hiragana. That's the basic writing system, in which you can write almost everything in Japanese. There are things that are always written in Hiragana, but writing only in Hiragana will make you seem stupid. The more Kanji you learn and use instead of Hiragana, the more educated you will seem. This is the writing system everone should start with.









KATAKANA

The next one is Katakana. As you can see what you can write using Katakana is exactly the same as what you can with Hiragana, the Japanese insist, however, that every word with foreign origin is written in Katakana. Katakana is used to spell all the loan words (and only them)*, so you won't be seeing it that much in everyday life (at least not as much as Kanji and Hiragana).






KANJI

The last, and unarguably HARDEST writing system is Kanji. There will be no table posted here for them, simply because there is literally thousands of them. You shouldn't be worried about Kanji yet, it is far too early - besides everything in Japanese can be written using Hiragana and Katana only. Later I will start posting some Kanji after every lesson.


Anyway, that is all for now. I will leave you to learn the writing system - it takes a while, as some of them seem really similar. But if you think this is hard, just wait till you start learining Kanji.


P.S  As I don't expect you to memorize all of the kana (that's what Hiragana and Katakana are collectively called) I will be writing the beginner lessons in romaji (simply put using latin latters to write Japanese).

*Actually there are some cases when katakana is used to write Japanese words, such as names of restaurants, but that is only because the Japanese think that Katakana is cooler than Hiragana, and by writing words that should be written in Hiragana in Katakanam, you are considered COOL. That, however, is like slang in English, and is not correct.

29 comments:

  1. I'm surely interested in more of this, I have always been interested in languages

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  2. Yay! Lesson one. I'm totally going to do this

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  3. Japanese looks so complicated. So as much as I admire your efforts, I'm English and everyone speaks English, so I cba.

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  4. i could NOT survive in japan SO MUCH KANJI TO MASTER

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  5. I remember trying to learn Japanese back in middle school i still remember a few of the sayings i will keep comin back to learn more though!

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  6. I will try to learn some Japanese, it will be cool, eheh!

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  7. I know a person who speaks Japanese. He says it is very hard to learn all the signs/ writing systems.
    Are there also dialects in Japanese?

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  8. Yes, there are dialects in Japanese. Quite a few, actually. Some more popular are the Tokyo, Hokkaidō, Edo and Tōhoku dialects. Dialects in Japanese are called "ben", for example Osaka-ben.

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  9. lol, always wanted to laern now i got no excuse, but i always imagine mandorin to be the dominant language with the 1.3 billion speakers, nice post

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  10. a good and free way to learn japanese?? this sounds too good to be true...


    but i'll bite

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  11. i live in hawaii so i already know most japanese lol...

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  12. Too much to learn! Must take forever.

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  13. Can't wait to put the systems in practice!

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  14. I will learn japaness in to time - thank you :-D

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  15. @jonwinters

    Not many, actually, I'll keep it a professional secret so that you don't think I'm incompetent, lol :P

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  16. Didn't really motivate me to start the KANJI part but nice lesson! x)

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  17. very nice always wanted to learn Japanese but never had the willpower to power through and actually do it.

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  18. It's good to see the simplified forms.

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  19. Holy crap dude, this is just the blog I need for my studies. Thanks a lot.

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  20. wow reall good bro i was looking for a blog like this finally found it.... fallowin

    http://reachthenews.blogspot.com/

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  21. I've always wanted to learn some Japanese since I can read Chinese giving me a head start in Kanji. Still kind of difficult though.

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  22. If the Kanji arent't a problem for you, the rest should be relatively easy :)

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  23. Hey I wanted to ask you a question, how could I get ahold?

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