Japanese Just Because: 5/1/11

learning the alphabet

the japanese alphabet is made up into 3 sections
katakana and hirigana are the first 2.
they are collectively called the kana
and are just letters that corrospond to sounds
much like our own english alphabet.
the kanji however is an alphabet containing thousands of charecters
where each individual charecter has several ways of being pronounced
Ok lets go

katakana

the katakana is probably the easiest of the 3 alphabets
for beginners to learn, this is because it is used
only for importated words. and the majority of these
words come from english other imported words come from french and germen.
for example the japanese word バイソン meaning bison
is pronounced baison
バ ba
イ i
ソ so
ン n

just a quick explanation on how the letters work
the consanants are each attatched to a vowel
e.g they have a letter for each of the following
a i u e o
pa pi pu pe po
ka ki ku ke ko
etc.

Hirigana
hirigana is structured the same way katakana is
however this alphabet is only use for words that come directly from japanese
すごい
pronounced sugoi means amazing (this, unlike the hirigana words, is not a word imported from another language)

how to learn these alphabets

I learned the kana (katakana and hirigana are collectively called kana)
using the tips and instructions given in
www.123japanese.com
under the kana section.
they have a really intutive way to show you how to write and remember all the letters!
so check it out.
once you finish that you can test yourself using

www.realkana.com
i use this every day or other day to keep myself sharp on these alphabets.

well, folks ive run out of time for right now, so it looks like im going to have to make another post
later telling you about the kanji

アイウエオ

Japanese Just Because

5/31/11

The kana

Welcome