Welcome to Gaia! ::

【一】 Introduction
【二】 Table of Contents (this)
【三】 Students and teachers
【四】 Pronunciation and intro to hiragana
【五】 Pronunciation and hiragana continued
【六】 Katakana
【七】 Intro to grammar - desu + wa
【八】 Pronouns and basic vocabulary
【九】 Negation and three basic gobi: ka, yo, ne
【十】 Past tense and possession
【十一】 Na-adjectives, No-adjectives, colors, and intro to i-adjectives
【十二】 I-adjectives continued, "mo" particle
【十三】 Intro to verbs: transitive and intransitive, "ga" and "wo" particles
【十四】 Verbs continued, motion verbs and location, "ni" and "e" particles
【十五】 Conversational essentials
【十六】 Intro to kanji: Days of the week / elements / celestial bodies
【十七】 Adverbs and the verbs "naru" (to become) and "suru" (to do)
【十八】Existence: the verbs "aru" and "iru," and the particle "de"
【十九】Te form: connecting sentences, making requests, and present progressive tense

The first step to learning Japanese that anyone should take is to begin learning the writing system. There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, while Japanese can be rendered in Roman letters (called roomaji in Japanese), Japanese people don't actually write that way (I've actually heard stories where Japanese people have troubles reading paragraphs written in roomaji). Another reason is, that to learn a foreign language (especially one that's not similar to your native language), you have to give up your native language and try to start over from square one. Reading Japanese in English letters will subconsciously give you a mental connection between the two languages, which there isn't. And lastly, the kana are fairly easy to learn, and since kana is a phonetic syllabary it's convenient to learn in the beginning when you're also learning pronunciation. They go hand in hand.

You might be asking yourself, how does Japanese have a phonetic syllabary when it uses Chinese characters?

The answer is, that Japanese writing system consists of 3 different writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

• Hiragana (平仮名) is a syllabary used when writing particles and conjugations, among other things. Some examples: あいうえお. Hiragana looks very... curvy
  
  
• Katakana (片仮名) is a syllabary used mostly when writing foreign names or words of foreign origin. Some examples: アイウエオ. Katakana looks very... line-y?
  
  
• Kanji (漢字) are Chinese characters used in Japanese writing. These are used to give meaning to words. Some examples: 月火水木金. Compared to hiragana and katakana, kanji usually look complex.

The two syllabaries hiragana and katakana, make up a group called "kana." There are 46 kana of each syllabary used in modern Japanese, making 92 total kana. (But that's nothing-- there are THOUSANDS of kanji, and you need to be able to read 2,000 kanji to understand 90% of a newspaper.) Both hiragana and katakana symbolize the same sounds, and it's not uncommon for them to look similar when symbolizing the same sound. (As a matter of fact, the syllable "he" is written the same in both scripts -- へ.)

In order to understand why Japanese has this weird writing system of 3 scripts, it's worth looking into the history of the Japanese writing system. Japanese never had an indigenous writing system. When they made contact with China, Japanese people started learning Chinese to seem erudite. The first usage of Chinese characters in Japan was in the 4th century AD. But they didn't use them in the context of the Japanese language... this was largely impossible due to Japanese and Chinese having different sentence orders, Japanese having conjugations while Chinese doesn't, etc. So Japanese people just wrote in Chinese for a while. In the 8th century, a poet (or group of poets) thought of the great idea of using kanji for their phonetic sounds, not for their meanings (which is what kanji are normally used for). This caught on and the script that the poet(s) used eventually got simplified and became the kana we know and love today. As an example, い and イ, the hiragana and katakana for the syllable "i," are both oversimplifications of the kanji 以, which also has the sound "i." (Click here to see how kanji has been simplified into hiragana if you're interested.)

So now that we know about the origins and functions of hiragana (we'll be going into more detail about functions later), let's start actually learning them. I found this great chart on Wikipedia ( heart ) :



Learning the correct stroke order for kana is very important. Kana follow the same stroke order rules as kanji, and if you don't write kanji the right way they're gonna look funky.

Japanese pronunciation is fairly simple. (Almost) every syllable is a combination of a consonant and a vowel, as you can see in the chart. The only exceptions are the vowels and "n." (I'll cover this in a sec)

The 5 vowels are A, I, U, E, and O. While they are the same vowels as English when written down, remember that English vowels can have multiple sounds, but Japanese ones are always the same exact sound. (The Japanese vowels are very similar to the Spanish vowels, if you speak Spanish by chance.)

• あ (A) - pronounced "ah"
  
• い ( I ) - pronounced "ee," like in "tree."
  
• う (U) - pronounced "oo," like the "ue" in "glue."
  
• え (E) - pronounced like "eh," like the "e" in "bed"
  
• お (O) - pronounced "oh," like the o's in "Ohio."

*btw, this is going by American English pronunciation*

***NOTE***
Often, when paired with a consonant, " I " and "U" are practically silent. For example, you know that Sasuke guy from Naruto? Why is it that his name is pronounced sah-SSS-keh while Naruto's name is pronounced nah-ROO-toh? Don't fret about it, you'll learn when to silent which vowels with experience. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.

Although there are sounds similar to the Japanese vowels in English, they're not identical. The best way to learn how they really sound is to hear them. For this you can go here to listen to each syllable individually. Or you can use another website of course.

With that in mind, let's continue to look at the consonants that are combined with the vowels.

K, S, T, N, M, Y, and W are all practically identical to their English counterparts. But of course there are some that I have to expound on.

H - this is also very similar to its English counterpart, but it's not pronounced with a burst of air like it often is in English. It's light.

R - this is the only sound that's very different than in English. The Japanese R is actually between an R and a L. It's hard to explain in text so refer to audio and try to copy the sounds they're making. (You might have heard of "engrish," which is what people call it when Japanese people speak English badly. If you haven't, you should look it up, it's funny.)

W - while I said that this is regular, there is an exception, "wo." The w in this is very soft in modern Japanese, and is very barely audible if it is audible. It's usually pronounced exactly like "o." (remember that "wa" and "wo" are the only W syllables used in modern Japanese)

N - don't get me wrong, na, ni, nu, ne, and no are all very similar to their English counterparts... but there's a 6th "N." This is the only syllable that contains no vowel. It's a nasal sound. Unlike in English, where if "n" is in the middle of a word it's pronounced at the end of a syllable (i.e. how "pan" is all one syllable), in Japanese "n" is its own consonant (so "pan" would be pronounced pah-NNN). It's just as long as any other syllable. Remember, this only applies to "N" when it's by itself.

You might have noticed a few oddballs on the chart. Like, why does it go from "sa" to "shi" to "su"...? These kinds of irregularities in romanization are due to the Japanese accent. You have to remember these few exceptions.

• S + I = SHI (like the English word "she" )
  
• T + I = CHI (like chi, that Chinese energy thing you hear about in martial arts movies)
  
• T + U = TSU. This is a hard sound for English speakers at first. Guess what, you know how they taught you in school how the "t" in "tsunami" is silent? Well it's not. You pronounce the T, and the S, and also the U. Refer to audio.
  
• H + U = FU. Not trying to be obscene here. It's pronounced like the "fu" in "kung fu," but softer.

I'll put a few hiragana below, you have to say what sound it is. I'll put the answers in white text, so highlight them to see them. (I don't suggest trying this until you've studied hiragana individually for a bit of time, unless you have a photographic memory.)

き >ki< (highlight between the arrows to see the answer)

を >wo<

わ >wa<

れ >re<

ね >ne<

も >mo<

あ >a<

お >o<

ん >n<

ち >chi<

め >me<

ぬ >nu<



Lesson-wise, that's about it. I plan to spend the next lesson teaching a few kana rules that will let you make more sounds with the kana you already know. (We've only covered about half of all the Japanese syllables, but we've covered all of the hiragana.) After that I plan to spend a lesson on katakana... and from there start on actual grammar. I'll also be putting in some everyday phrases in the next 2 lessons so you can start speaking Japanese.

From here you need to find a memorization technique that works for you, and memorize the hiragana. I used to say that iKnow is the undeniably best place to learn kana. But unfortunately, starting in April, you have to pay to use it. If you want to you can still try and use it -- I think you should be able to learn the kana in a month.

Besides that, I once again strongly recommend Anki.

If you can find a website or program that serves as audio kana flashcards, I think you found yourself a keeper. Having audio while learning the kana is imo very important because you want to have good pronunciation when starting out, right? (If you do find a good site, tell me and I'll post it here!)

I'd like to be a student.

Added both

How much do you guys know already? I know I've seen Sakura in Japanese threads...

I'm a noob ...I just know some words and what's Hiragana and Katakana,etc...but I have problem in reading them!

Added princess

Ah alright that's good ^^ Was just making sure I was right in starting at the very beginning

Added em 3nodding

I pretty much rote memorized them so I don't really have any sites I can personally recommend... >< besides iKnow, but yeah...