A Linguaphile's Path to Learning Moonrunes

[Sethera]

 

Main Lessons

Lesson 1: Pronunciation

Lesson 2: Hiragana, Part 1

Lesson 3: Hiragana, Part 2

Lesson 4: Greetings

 

Culture Updates

The Writing System

Geography

 

Hello all, this is Sethera.

 

Little bit about me before we start. I love languages. They're pretty much my forte, and I'm thinking of going into language teaching as a career. I'm also a hardcore Japanophile when it comes to video games, light novels, and manga/anime. These two combined into an obvious result: wanting to learn Japanese. I went as far as memorizing all the Hiragana and the grammar before I realized that learning two languages at once wasn't a smart thing. So I threw Japanese aside to focus on Spanish. I finished learning Spanish about a year ago though so I have no excuse anymore. It's time to focus wholeheartedly on Moonspeak. I even paid for a learning application and everything.
 

This blog's purpose is twofold. One, to describe the path I walk while I learn Japanese. And two, to spread the knowledge. You could call it a progress report + teaching blog. I'll be updating this every Thursday with a new lesson. Sometimes there will be extra posts that talk about Japan's culture, as a way to enrich the learning experience. Those will come whenever I feel like it.

 

A few notes:

• Even though the blog updates weekly, my actual progress with the language is a bit farther and I go at my own pace. However, I figure one lesson a week is a good update speed for this. Gives me a bit of a buffer too.
• Most of my Japanese education comes from the paid application (and what I learned before), but I'm also making use of online resources such as Japanese blogs and practice games. I'm not going to relate what they say verbatim, but instead put my own spin on things, so hopefully that goes well.
• I'm going to write these updates as if the person reading through them is a complete beginner, so for those with prior experience in Japanese, please be patient with me, and know I'm not trying to look down on you or anything.
• As my first language is English and this blog is in English, I will make a lot of English comparisons and generally treat all readers as Anglophones. Sorry if this inconveniences those who struggle with the language, but I'm not sure how else to do it.
• I'll be covering a lot of crap every lesson and there's no good way to tl;dr it. To make things easier on you all, I put most of the information in spoilers.
• I generally post fairly late, and my time zone is GMT-6, so what is Thursday for me might be Friday for you.

Warning, I am still a beginner, and I would love it if people with experience in Japanese could give their input as well.

 

[mitchermitcher]

Oh hey, someone else trying to learn the damn thing. Good for you, it's....a pain in the ass to learn but it's fun. Really. 本当に.

 

Ideally you'd spend two weeks grinding hiragana and katakana until you have it encoded into your mind. You don't need to be able to instantly recognize a letter but you should not need to look up all that. But well let's see how you do. Looking forward to seeing this update.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Sounds like a fun journey, good luck. :D I'll try and check it out whenever you post. (And I'm sure you'll bug me about it XD )

[宇佐見 蓮子@C94]

Oh hey, someone else trying to learn the damn thing. Good for you, it's....a pain in the ass to learn but it's fun. Really. 本当に.

 

Ideally you'd spend two weeks grinding hiragana and katakana until you have it encoded into your mind. You don't need to be able to instantly recognize a letter but you should not need to look up all that. But well let's see how you do. Looking forward to seeing this update.

  

 

 

Hello all, this is Sethera.

 

Little bit about me before we start. I love languages. They're pretty much my forte, and I'm thinking of going into language teaching as a career. I'm also a hardcore Japanophile when it comes to video games, light novels, and manga/anime. These two combined into an obvious result: wanting to learn Japanese. I went as far as memorizing all the Hiragana and the grammar before I realized that learning two languages at once wasn't a smart thing. So I threw Japanese aside to focus on Spanish. I finished learning Spanish about a year ago though so I have no excuse anymore. It's time to focus wholeheartedly on Moonspeak. I even paid for a learning application and everything.

 

This blog's purpose is twofold. One, to describe the path I walk while I learn Japanese. And two, to spread the knowledge. You could call it a progress report + teaching blog.

 

I'll be updating this every Thursday with a new lesson (which means first one is tomorrow). Sometimes there will be extra posts that talk about Japan's culture, as a way to enrich the learning experience. Those will come whenever I feel like it.

 

Warning, I am still a beginner, and I would love it if people who already know Japanese could give their input as well.

 

Oooh, that makes the three of us, then~

[Sethera]

Oh hey, someone else trying to learn the damn thing. Good for you, it's....a pain in the ass to learn but it's fun. Really. 本当に.

 

Ideally you'd spend two weeks grinding hiragana and katakana until you have it encoded into your mind. You don't need to be able to instantly recognize a letter but you should not need to look up all that. But well let's see how you do. Looking forward to seeing this update.

Yeah I remember how much of a pain it was the first time around. ^^; When I first learned the Hiragana and Katakana, it was so frustrating trying to memorize it all. I never did fully memorize Katakana, but I did get Hiragana down before I decided to focus on Spanish alone, so that makes it a bit easier.

Though tbh I'm not even worried about those two syllabaries. It's Kanji I'm dreading. ^^;

 

Sounds like a fun journey, good luck. :D I'll try and check it out whenever you post. (And I'm sure you'll bug me about it XD )

Thanks! And yeah, I'll totally be bugging you about it. XD

  Oooh, that makes the three of us, then~

This makes me really happy! I'm glad that I'm not alone in trying to learn this language. ^^

[mitchermitcher]

Yeah I remember how much of a pain it was the first time around. ^^; When I first learned the Hiragana and Katakana, it was so frustrating trying to memorize it all. I never did fully memorize Katakana, but I did get Hiragana down before I decided to focus on Spanish alone, so that makes it a bit easier.

Though tbh I'm not even worried about those two syllabaries. It's Kanji I'm dreading. ^^;

 

Thanks! And yeah, I'll totally be bugging you about it. XD

 

This makes me really happy! I'm glad that I'm not alone in trying to learn this language. ^^

See, if you're tackling kanji by itself, it's still a pain but it's mostly meaningless and not that difficult, just tedious and a lot of rote. It's when you tackle it ALONG with grammar AND vocabulary ALL AT THE SAME TIME that true suffering begins...

 

Good luck :^)

studying for over a year and it was kinda lonely to do it by myself, i'll help out whenever you ask

Ah by the way, how's spanish as a language? I've been wondering about which language to work on after Japanese(which is needless worry since it'll be a long time until I'm good and done).

  

Oooh, that makes the three of us, then~

WELL THREE'S A COMPANY

 

remember y'all, have fun studyin'

[Sethera]

See, if you're tackling kanji by itself, it's still a pain but it's mostly meaningless and not that difficult, just tedious and a lot of rote. It's when you tackle it ALONG with grammar AND vocabulary ALL AT THE SAME TIME that true suffering begins...

 

Good luck :^)

studying for over a year and it was kinda lonely to do it by myself, i'll help out whenever you ask

Ah by the way, how's spanish as a language? I've been wondering about which language to work on after Japanese(which is needless worry since it'll be a long time until I'm good and done).

Ugh that's so true. At least when you're learning Hiragana and Katakana, that's generally what you learn first, so you're not trying to learn other things at the same time. But by the time you tackle Kanji, you're already trying to learn a bunch of other stuff.

 

I almost missed what you wrote there. XD But thanks, collaborative learning is always better than doing it solo. :D

 

As for Spanish, it's probably one of the easiest languages to learn. It's fairly structured, and though it has exceptions (but so does every language) it doesn't have nearly the number of exceptions that English has. Its pronunciation is also quite similar to Japanese when it comes to vowels, so it wouldn't be a bad choice at all for a third language.

 

And here's another one for the "wants to learn moonspeak" club.  Studying isn't my forte, so I'm counting on you to make me at least decent in it ^_~

Glad to have ya! And I'll try my best, though as I'll say later, practice and constant stimuli help a lot. I'll be giving studying and memorization tips once I get to Hiragana, so hopefully that'll help too. :)

[Wildflame]

4 years of formal experience learning the language and I still don't know jackshit. Good luck with that.

 

Nah, jk. It's definitely a difficult journey, but it's just as satisfying. Have fun with it!

[bury the year]

頑張れ, 加油, etc etc.

[Sethera]

4 years of formal experience learning the language and I still don't know jackshit. Good luck with that.

 

Nah, jk. It's definitely a difficult journey, but it's just as satisfying. Have fun with it!

Yeah I know it'll be a long and hard slog. T_T Learning a language is never easy, but it is fun (at least for me), so that makes it easier. ^^

 

頑張れ, 加油, etc etc.

ありがとう! ^^

[Tourmaline]

If you want to talk to practice then that would be cool (admittedly learned katakana and hiragana simultaneously). I got them down in three or four nights, though.

[a bad post]

First of all I just wanted to wish you all good luck, and hopefully I can learn a little something from this blog too~

 

For anybody who's interested in learning other languages besides English I'm fluent in Greek and French, so if anyone's curious be sure to shoot me a PM~

[Sethera]

If you want to talk to practice then that would be cool (admittedly learned katakana and hiragana simultaneously). I got them down in three or four nights, though.

Yeah if you stay focused, it doesn't take long at all, thankfully. Still dreading Kanji... :')

 

First of all I just wanted to wish you all good luck, and hopefully I can learn a little something from this blog too~

 

For anybody who's interested in learning other languages besides English I'm fluent in Greek and French, so if anyone's curious be sure to shoot me a PM~

Thanks! We will all definitely need it, though again, it'll be worth it in the end. ^^

And that's cool! I've always wanted to learn those languages, so I'm a little jealous. XD For now, I'm focusing on Japanese, but if/when I learn it, I'll definitely be looking into them.

[Sethera]

1: Pronunciation

 

Hello all, and welcome to the first lesson of this blog!

 

[spoiler=Introduction]

The first thing to note about Japanese pronunciation is that it uses monophthongs, or pure vowels. By pure vowels, I mean there are no gliding sounds (diphthongs) like there are in English. Try and say "no." Likely, you tacked a little "ooh" on the end after the "oh" sound. That's what I mean by gliding. Japanese has none of that s**t. There also aren't many sounds. English has over 8000 while Japanese has only 110. That's a huge difference, guys.
 
This means that, while it'll feel easier to learn since there are fewer sounds than in English, we're also likely to mangle the pronunciation unintentionally, adding weird sounds when there are none. So to prevent people making fun of you for having a dumb accent, try to listen to as many native Japanese speakers as you can (shouldn't be too hard, what with anime being a thing and all). Those of you with experience in Spanish might find it good to try and draw on your knowledge of Spanish vowels for some of this stuff too.

 

[spoiler=Syllabaries]

Japanese has two syllabaries (and then it has Kanji). Syllabaries are similar to our alphabets, except instead of being made up of letters, they're made up of syllables, or sounds. Like if you try to sound out the letter K then you just make a "kkk" noise. An actual syllable would be if you added a vowel such as A and then you'd make a crow sound. That crow sound is to a syllabary what a letter is to our alphabet.

 

[spoiler=Vowels]

There are five vowels in Japanese. A, I, U, E, and O in that order. Always in that order. I have no clue why, but that's how they're listed whenever they're listed, so yeah.

 

AAs in "father." Never as in "apple" or "date."

IAs in "machine." Never as in "it" or "fight."

UAs in "Jupiter." Never as in "jump."

EAs in "pen." Never as in "Greek."

OAs in "hope." Never as in "wrong."

 

Aside from the E which has an "eh" sound here as opposed to "ey", this is the same way Spanish vowels sound.

 

[spoiler=Multiple Vowels]

In English, if you have two of the same vowels side by side, the pronunciation changes. For instance, add an E to "fed" and you get "feed" which you pronounce differently. Japanese, however, doesn't have all that crap. Two of the same vowels in a row just means the sound lasts twice as long. Try and tap it out. The word oku would take two beats (o-ku) while ooku takes three (o-o-ku).

 

What about when you have two different vowels though? In English, you would have to just memorize the general rules for how that would go (e.g. E and A next to each other generally sounds like "ee" in English). In Japanese, you merely have to say the separate vowels, like you would in Spanish. For instance, the word haori would sound like ha-o-ri.

 

There are two exceptions to this however. When you have E+I and O+U, it works just as if you had E+E and O+O. In other words, the sound lasts twice as long. Sensei for instance wouldn't be se-n-se-i but instead se-n-se-e. I can't think of a good way to help you remember this, though it's fairly intuitive.

 

Another thing Japanese does differently is stress. In English, we stress certain syllables in a word. For instance, com-pu-ter. This is known as stress modulation. However, in Japanese, each syllable is stressed equally. This can be a bit hard for foreigners to grasp, because we'll instinctively want to stress certain syllables. How many times have you heard people say tsu-na-mi? In actuality, the na sound would come out just as stressed as the other syllables. Another note is that stressing one syllable can warp the sounds of the other syllables. Tsu often sounds less like "tsoo" and more like "tsuh" if we stress the na.

 

 

[spoiler=Consonants]

There are a few consonants in Japanese that aren't in English, and also a few in English that aren't in Japanese. Below is a list of all the Japanese consonants.

 

CHAs in "chocolate."

DAs in "dog." See note.

FAs in "fawn." See note.

GAs in "goat." Never a soft G like in "George."

HAs in "hot."

JAs in "jam."

KAs in "kangaroo."

MAs in "mother."

NAs in "north."

PAs in "pillow."

RSee note.

SAs in "sun."

SHAs in "shun."

TAs in "torn."

TSUAs in "eat soup."

WAAs in "want."

YAs in "you."

ZAs in "zoo."

 

There's nothing too surprising there, as English speakers were the ones to pick which letters to use in the romanization of Japanese. More on romanization next lesson, but basically, it's the conversion of non-Latin characters to Latin characters (the alphabet we use is called the Latin alphabet).

 

Some notes on a few consonants:

D - The Japanese D is heavier than an English D. The tongue presses hard against the upper teeth and gums. Move a little lower and a "th" sound comes out. To hear it yourself, listen to any Japanese Ds or simply go to this site and search words like dabudabu or karada.

F - No biting your lower lip like you would for an English F. Just have your upper teeth barely touch it as you close your mouth naturally. Since there's no lip-biting, foreigners often hear this like an H sound. Some words to search on the site include fuufu or ofuro.

[spoiler=R]

If you've ever watched an anime and listened to the way the characters pronounce their Rs, you may have noticed this already, but a Japanese R is a lot different from our Rs. In English, the sides of your tongue touch the roof of your mouth, while the tip stays down to let air flow. Try and say "rrr" slowly and you'll see what I mean. This is completely foreign to Japanese speakers.

 

The Japanese R is pretty much the opposite. A Japanese speaker would lightly flick the tip of their tongue on the roof of their mouth, kind of like the sound we make when a T or D occurs in the middle of a word. "Ladder" for instance. Spanish speakers might notice that this is pretty much the exact same way to say a Spanish R, just without the trilling or rolling.

 

A good method to learn how to say the Japanese R is this. Say "regatta" a few times and then change it to "katta," using exactly the same tongue flick. It's almost identical to the Japanese kara. A couple of other useful words to help you learn are kuruma and ofuro.

 

 

 

[spoiler=Doubled Consonants]

Two of the same consonants next to each other work exactly the same way doubled vowels work. The consonant lasts for two beats instead of one. To do this, you pause on the consonant for twice as long. For instance, metta versus meta. Say the "me" then put your tongue in position for the "ta" sound but freeze for one beat before saying "ta." That's how you say metta.

 

 

 

 

 

And that's it for Lesson 1. I'll probably be putting up a culture post sometime between now and next lesson, just to help prepare you for it and also to learn a little history. Hope you enjoyed this and if it sounded a little dry or too wordy, please let me know!

[mitchermitcher]

Very phonetic-based first lesson. While in the end it's not a lot that's covered yet, it IS important to cover this sheet early. Fixing pronounciation is a pain later on or so I hear.

 

IAs in "marine." Never as in "fit."

w-wait

 

marine's i is longer than fit's but i thought they basically sounded the same

[Sethera]

Very phonetic-based first lesson. While in the end it's not a lot that's covered yet, it IS important to cover this s*** early. Fixing pronounciation is a pain later on or so I hear.

 

w-wait

 

marine's i is longer than fit's but i thought they basically sounded the same

 Yeah, imo pronunciation is like the first thing you should focus on in pretty much any language. I was worried people might be disappointed by this as a first lesson, but we'll be getting to the meat of it pretty soon and yeah, important s**t.

Hmm, I say it as "ee" but it could be a dialect thing. Basically, it's "eek" instead of "ick." I'll try and use another word instead, like maybe machine?

[mitchermitcher]

マリーン

フィット

iunno, marine's 'ee' and fit's short 'i' just sounds like the same thing with different lengths to me

[Sethera]

I'm not getting into kana yet for this lesson, and when I say "marine" or "fit" I mean the English words only, not what they're translated as.

Who knows? *shrugs* As I said before it's probably a dialect thing. I did marine cuz it actually had an I representing the sound, but something like "bean" or "knee" could work just as well. It's the same way the Spanish pronounce their I too if that helps. I should probably add that to the thing.

[mitchermitcher]

well no i don't think using marine as an example is wrong(although machine is fine too), just that 'fit' doesn't work as a bad example. maybe 'fight'. or maybe it is just a dialect thing.

[a bad post]

This was a really good first lesson. I was proud of myself since I already knew the thing about multiple vowels. The thing about the "D" was really easy since we have something very similar in Greek, but I had to spend like 20 mins trying to "R" right (and I'm still not even sure I have it) because Greek rolls the funk out of it's "R"s

[Sethera]

well no i don't think using marine as an example is wrong(although machine is fine too), just that 'fit' doesn't work as a bad example. maybe 'fight'. or maybe it is just a dialect thing.

Oh I see, yeah I'll change it. Maybe just write "it" and also "fight" or something else as another example. Cuz the I is neither of those sounds.

 

This was a really good first lesson. I was proud of myself since I already knew the thing about multiple vowels. The thing about the "D" was really easy since we have something very similar in Greek, but I had to spend like 20 mins trying to "R" right (and I'm still not even sure I have it) because Greek rolls the f*** out of it's "R"s

Glad you liked it! I was worried about people's reaction to this but I guess I shouldn't have. ^^;
Oh yeah, the R is a pain. Tbh it took me a while too, though not as long as it took me to learn how to roll Rs. That s**t took me forever. D:
Best advice I can give though is to just try and look up Japanese words with R in them and listen intently to what they sound like, to see how close you are.

[Wildflame]

I freaking love Japanese phonetics because it's soooo similar to Spanish. Native English speakers can have a harder time with it.

[Sethera]

I freaking love Japanese phonetics because it's soooo similar to Spanish. Native English speakers can have a harder time with it.

Yeah same! It makes it easier for sure if you have experience in Spanish, one of the reasons I also recommend learning Spanish after Japanese or vice versa.

Here in America, Spanish is a pretty popular second language choice, so at least any Americans reading this could probably figure out pronunciation pretty easily.

[Sethera]

The Writing System

Hello all, and welcome to the first post from the extra, or "Culture" segment. As I said in the OP, these will just come whenever I feel like it, though the actual "lesson" lessons will come every Thursday as planned (though the time may vary). Though since part of this blog is about my own personal journey, I'll put a bit of that with every update. Didn't last time because there wasn't much to say.

[spoiler=Sethera's Path, Entry 1']

So I'm probably a week or two ahead of this blog at the moment. Learning hiragana all over again. Originally, I took two days to learn it because I was eager and impatient and then ended up deciding to drop it, for reasons I already stated. However, cramming all that stuff into your brain at once isn't a good thing. Sure, it's great for getting it into your short-term memory, but long-term memory requires learning something over a larger span of time, as per the spacing effect. Basically, if you are trying to study for an exam, best bet is to try and study a bit every day rather than all at once a day before like I do. Works the same with trying to learn a language. Would you rather have it in your short-term memory (and forget it eventually) or long-term memory? For this, I'm definitely working to put it in long-term rather than short-term.

I've spent a lot of my time looking up resources and stuff for you guys. Not for entirely altruistic reasons, mind you. For one thing, it's a great time to take a break from studying, and for another, those resources help me out too. So win-win there. I'll post links to the resources when they become relevant. Speaking of, PDFy is apparently to pdfs what imgur is to images, but it's been down since like, forever. Lame man, just lame. Thankfully, it looks like there are plenty of other places to upload pdfs, like DocDroid, Scribd, or PdfSR. Google Docs is another alternative, but don't you have to have a google account to use those? I'd rather make these accessible to everybody.

Anyway, decided to take it slow and learn one to two sets every day. If I'm struggling with a particular set I might take a day or two to review. Review is good, review is great, review puts things in your memory bank. And it's super easy to just spend a bit of time each day. Just like, whenever I take a bit of a break from whatever I'm doing, or waiting for something to buffer, or waiting for a skype chat to get active, I start studying. It's a great way to learn for me, since I'm the type that becomes bored with stuff easily, so I've started seeing learning Japanese as a way to stave off boredom. Even the days when I am forced to go outside with family and friends, I try to still spend time learning/reviewing either before or afterward.

As of right now I just learned the Y set, which means I'm almost done. I'll probably have finished hiragana by the time Thursday rolls around, which will be great timing.

 

 

Now let's move on to the actual pseudo-lesson!

 

[spoiler=China was ahead of the game]

There was a time when human beings did not write. The Chinese were one of the first peoples in Asia to start on that, around 4000 years ago via basic pictograms (pictorial symbols for words or phrases). These gradually evolved into a set of characters that could express any possible sentence, the basic requirement of a full-fledged writing system.

Pictograms can work on expressing basic ideas like "I see you," but for complicated sentences like "I saw how you acted like a jerk to poor Naomi the other day," you need a bit more refinement. Even if you figured out a clever way to phrase it, what about the poor schmuck who has to read that? You need something with rules that everybody understands. The Chinese figured out a way to do that, making characters that represent not just physical objects, but abstract ideas, as well as rules for using them in actual sentences.

 

[spoiler=Japan was a copycat, except not really]

So, the Chinese brought their writing system to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. Japan received the characters around 400 AD, and soon after, Japanese officials began writing in their own language, Japanese, using Chinese characters. They named these characters kanji. That was all well and good except for one thing. Japanese and Chinese are two totally separate languages.

You might say that's no big deal, but try to imagine if kanji were imported to us. We're a bunch of behind-the-times English-speaking schmucks with no written language. Maybe we have calendars or basic symbols like the sun, but we can't do things like write a short fiction story or take notes in class. So then the Chinese come and say, "Bro I have you covered here. You can use our writing system."

So now you can use Chinese characters to say what you want. Let's say your professor is talking about mitosis. You want to write down: "The cell splits in two." So you write: "细胞 拆分 在 两." There are a few problems. For one, there is no exact word for the in Chinese, so the above sentence is written just as "Cell splits in two." For another, some words would take up two characters for various reasons, tense being one of them. Makes things a bit unwieldy. Same thing for the poor Japanese.

So as you can imagine, it took the Japanese lot of time and effort to master the written language, which meant only those with a lot of time and money on their hands could do it a.k.a. the rich and powerful. Except women. Because women were naturally less intelligent than men, or so the Japanese believed at the time. So even rich women were generally uneducated in writing. However, the women wanted to write. So they did something pretty amazing. For each syllable they wanted to say, they chose a Chinese character to represent that specific sound, throwing out the original meaning.

For example, the Japanese word for sky is sora. The Chinese word for sky is 空. In the original system, a Japanese writer who wanted to say sora would use that character. However, our heroines made two separate characters for both so and ra. They said, "Just forget what these characters originally meant. Now they represent these sounds." This worked for Japan because their language only used a very small number of sounds in the first place, which meant that they could write Japanese phonetically using only a few dozen characters instead of the tens of thousands of characters in Chinese. This new way of writing Japanese with characters representing sounds was called man’yougana.

You could compare this to Egypt and their hieroglyphics. They appeared to be pictograms, but they were in fact representing specific sounds, just like with Japanese!

Later these phonetic characters were further simplified so they could be written in a few strokes, resulting in a set of about 50 characters (now 46) that one could truly call an alphabet (more accurately a syllabary), since they represented sounds, not meanings.

 

 

[spoiler=The two syllabaries]

So what did the man’yougana you just learned about evolve into? It developed into hiragana, one of three scripts that make up the Japanese language. And all three are required if you want to be able to read and write Japanese. Hiragana could be argued as one of the most important. Whether it is or not, it's still recommended that you learn it first.

Hiragana also has a cousin syllabary called katakana. Cousin because there is exactly one katakana character for every hiragana one, and they usually look similar. So basically the difference between print and cursive in English. What is katakana used for? Foreign words, or words that aren't Japanese in origin. So if we English-speakers used hiragana and katakana, we'd be using katakana a lot, since English is made up of a lot of foreign words, like bouquet.

The two scripts together are called kana, by the way. Kana means what you think it means: a syllabic Japanese script. Man’yougana, or the old syllabic script, is also a type of kana.

 

[spoiler=Kanji is still a thing though]

So the first two Japanese scripts are both kana, and both syllabic. But the third, kanji, didn't just disappear with their creation. Kanji was associated with wealth, power, and education, much like English is in many parts of the world today, so the rich and powerful were motivated to keep using it.

After World War II however, laws were passed that limited the use of kanji in newspapers to a fixed set of 1850 characters. Everything else was to be represented by kana. Little about that set changed as the years passed, and it now consists of about 2000 characters known as the jouyou kanji, or "daily use kanji." This means that, while you have less to learn than you would have in the past, you still have to learn kanji.

However, learning kanji will come a lot later, once we understand the basics of Japanese already. Japanese children don't start learning kanji until they can already speak Japanese fluently, so we have a ways to go.

 

[spoiler=Romaji]

You may have heard of Romaji before and are wondering why it wasn't mentioned before, and why it's not listed as one of the three Japanese scripts.

The word Romaji literally means Roman letters. By Roman letters, I mean the Roman, or Latin, alphabet, by which I mean the alphabet we use. Examples of languages that don't use the Latin alphabet include Greek, Russian, and Japanese. The process of converting a non-Latin writing system to the Latin writing system is known as romanization. For example, 今日は would be converted to konnichiwa in the Latin script. As it is a conversion, there are multiple ways of doing it, and there are a lot of disagreements on how to go about it. For instance, the word 大神 can be written as ōkami, oukami, ookami, or okami depending on which standard you use.

And I'm just gonna say here. Don't rely on it. We're going to use it for a bit to help make things easier to learn, but after a while we'll be dropping it entirely. You might be tempted to rely on it entirely, but it's like training wheels. A good crutch to start off with, but then you end up looking really stupid later on when all your friends are riding cool s**t like unicycles.

 

 

So I hope this was interesting for you. I find it interesting, anyway. I also feel that at least some of the information within is important to know if you're learning Japanese. See ya guys on Thursday!

 

[Sethera]

2: Hiragana, Part 1

 

Hello again guys, and welcome to lesson two of Sethera's blogatog! First things first. I recommend reading the culture update I put up on Tuesday, especially if this blog is your first experience with learning Japanese, as it's got some useful info on the three Japanese scripts. If not, that's okay too, cuz I'll quickly go over them again.

 

[spoiler=Sethera's Path, Entry 2]

So I figure some of you might be wondering whether this blog will last. After all, doing something like this is a lot of work. Worry not! I still plan on updating this regularly, and I'm still working on learning Japanese. Unfortunately, I had a brief snag in my plans on finishing hiragana. Mainly, exhaustion, RP shenanigans, and going to see Jurassic World 3D. And I probably won't get much done tomorrow either since I'm going on a family trip. But hopefully I'll have finished learning it all by the end of this weekend, and then I'll be able to move on to other stuff. What that is, I don't know yet, but I'm sure it'll be interesting.

 

Speaking of hiragana...

 

 

 

Let's move on to the lesson! Don't forget to take it slowly. One or two character sets a day should be good. Rushing isn't going to help you put it in long-term memory. Also make sure to click the links, since I'll be linking to various resources you can use.

 

[spoiler=Brief review on scripts]

For those that aren't in the know, there are three scripts in Japanese. Hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Kanji is a set of Chinese characters, each representing an object, idea, or concept. They are generally more complex in appearance than the other scripts, and there are around 2000 kanji that are used in daily life (though the actual number of kanji is around 50,000). Hiragana and katakana were both derived from kanji, and are syllabic, meaning each character represents a specific sound. The only difference between hiragana and katakana is the appearance of the characters, and the fact that katakana is used to write foreign words--words that aren't Japanese in origin. A foreign word in English would be café, for instance.

 

 

[spoiler=Intro]

In this lesson, we'll be covering the first half of hiragana. Note that hiragana is like our alphabet, except instead of letters there are characters, and each character represents a sound. There are 46 characters in hiragana, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't when you think about how many sounds English has. We'll be learning 25 hiragana this lesson, and 21 next lesson. Also, if you're planning on ever writing Japanese, pay attention to stroke order. It's very important. Unlike in English, where the order you write your letter isn't that important--though there are general trends, such as people generally crossing their Ts after they already wrote the vertical slash--the order you write a character in Japanese is pretty dang important.

 

Still, what's even more important is learning to read Japanese, and learning to write is a lot easier once you have learned how to read it. There are benefits to learning both at the same time, though, so just choose whatever you want. Learning stroke order is less important now that we have things like keyboards and such, but if you ever want to visit Japan and write stuff down for people, I recommend learning it.

 

 

[spoiler=あ い う え お]

Remember what I said about the vowels always being in the same order: A I U E O? Yeah, that rings true for hiragana as well. Look up any hiragana chart and you'll see it's always in that order. Again, not sure why, but might as well teach it in that order too, right?

So to repeat, from top to bottom it's A, I, U, E, O. Stroke order is also listed on the right.

 

You may have noticed that I or い has a little jump at the end of the first stroke. This is called a hane, and is a remnant from when the Japanese would write these with ink brushes. It's a little trail of ink that points to the next stroke. Nowadays, trailing ink isn't a problem anymore, but the hane remain. Keeping hane in mind will help a lot when you see characters in various handwriting styles.

 

Tofugu has some pretty good mnemonics for memorizing, so I'll just use those to help.

 

[spoiler=あ=A]

Pronunciation: "a" in car or awful.

-Note that the third stroke is trying to complete the circle.

-While similar to the お or "O" kana, the "A" kana has what looks to be a Capital A inside of it. That should help you remember that this kana stands for A.

 

 

[spoiler=い=I]

Pronunciation: "ee" in "eel"

-Make sure to keep in mind that the second stroke isn't as long as the first.

-Now how I remember it is I think of a fancy lowercase I whose dot has fallen off and elongated. But then again, I'm weird. It's probably best you try and remember this as a pair of eels just hanging out.

 

 

[spoiler=う=U]

Pronunciation: Like the double "oo" in ooh or boo

-Remember the lines in this character aren't perfectly straight, but curved.

-Now this one is pretty easy mnemonics-wise. Just think of a sideways U.

 

 

[spoiler=え=E]

Pronunciation: Like the "e" in exotic or egg

-Don't forget the wave at the end of the character.

-Now this one is a bit weird, but it works. Think of it like an exotic bird. The crest on its head is what gives away the fact that it's exotic. Remember that the crest makes it exotic, since there will be another bird you'll learn about later.

 

 

[spoiler=お=O]

Pronunciation: Like "o" as in oh or original

-The end of the second stroke is pointing in a curve toward the beginning of the third stroke. Keep that in mind when writing this character.

-If you look closely, you'll see there are two Os in this kana. It also looks like the old deviantART symbol but that's beside the point. Also try and remember that this has a stray stroke at the right that the あ lacks.

 

 

 

-Before you move on to the next set, I'd advise heading to Hiragana Drag-n-Drop and drag the five hiragana you just learned to the correct spot. This will help you to pick out specific characters amongst other, similar-looking kana. Do this until you can get this done in 10 seconds or less.

-Next print out or download this worksheet. Follow it as instructed by filling in the boxes (yes, I know they don't show up, but they will once you print or download it) with romaji for the kana. It's very important to wait the whole 5 or 10 minutes to help reinforce this information in your head.

 

 

[spoiler=か き く け こ]

Next up is ka, ki, ku, ke, ko.

[spoiler=か=Ka]

Pronunciation: K + あ sound. Like a crow sound "kaw," but without the slight U sound at the end.

-Think of the second and third strokes forming a triangle or tent of sorts. First stroke comes down in the center of the triangle.

-Think of somebody doing the Can-Can dance. Can you do the can can too?

-Or think of it like a sideways turtle. "Kame" means turtle.

 

 

[spoiler=き=Ki]

Pronunciation: K + い sound. Sounds just like the word key.

-In handwriting, the oval is split like so. However, the way shown above is the way it's shown in print. I'd prioritize learning how it's shown in print, but learning both ways will be useful if you ever want to read handwriting or stylized prints.

-Notice how much this resembles a key. That will help you remember this character.

 

 

[spoiler=く=Ku]

Pronunciation: K + う sound, making a coo sound.

-Keep the angle to 90 degrees or a bit more and you'll be good.

-Think of this kana as the mouth of a cuckoo bird, making "ku ku" noises.

 

 

[spoiler=け=Ke]

Pronunciation: K + え sound, making "ke." Think of the sound a gruff anime character makes when annoyed: "ke."

-Don't forget the hane at the end of stroke one and to veer to the left at the end of stroke three.

-This helps to form a keg shape. Try to think "keg" when you think of this character and that should help.

 

 

[spoiler=こ=Ko]

Pronunciation: K + お sound, making "ko."

-Although written as so above, it's also often written like this or how it's written in the chart. Keep that in mind when learning this character.

-Now this is a weird one. Think of a couple of worms living in co-habitation. You could also think about a couple of cords. I just remember it by remembering that the O characters in hiragana are usually the strangest-looking. You'll see what I mean next set too.

 

 

 

[spoiler=Ten-ten]

No, not the Naruto character! The ten-ten look like slanted quotation marks and mean something like "mark-mark." They are technically called dakuten, or "softening marks," and that's exactly what they do, soften the consonants. The softened version of K is G. So, ka with the ten-ten becomes ga. Some people advise learning the ten-ten characters after learning all the original kana, but personally I find it easier to learn them along with the set they accompany.

 

Ga gi gu ge go!

 

 

 

-Now go back to Hiragana Drag-n-Drop and when you can place all 10 characters you learned so far (15 if you count the dakuten characters) in 25 seconds or less, or have done it 5 times, then move on to the next step.

-Print out or download this worksheet. This includes kana from both the vowel and K set.

 

 

[spoiler=さ し す せ そ]

Next up is sa, shi, su, se, so.

[spoiler=さ=Sa]

Pronunciation: S + あ sound, like "saw" but without the U sound at the end.

-As with き, it's written with the loop unconnected in handwriting. Also note it's almost exactly the same, except with one horizontal stroke instead of two. To tell them apart, keep the mnemonics in mind.

-This is another weird one. Think of sign, but how it's pronounced (kind of like sa-een). There's a sign here. It's not that helpful a mnemonic for me, personally. I just think of it as a backwards S and since sa is the first in the S series, it's kind of like the vanguard. I don't know, I have a weird way of memorizing.

-I also associate sa and ki together, and try and think of the fact that it sounds like a name for a Japanese girl. Saki or Kisa.

 

 

[spoiler=し=Shi]

Pronunciation: Sh + い sound, like "she". You might wonder why it's like this, and that's because there is no "si" in the Japanese language.

-While this character looks similar to a fishhook, it actually slants at a bit of an angle instead of straight up.

-Still, remembering that you caught a poor seal with your fishhook might be a way to remember it. Me, I just remember that it looks like a curved I again.

-It's also the sound Yui makes when he's on a し-shaped rollercoaster.

On 7/30/15, at 11:34 PM, JustYui wrote: SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIET

 

 

[spoiler=す=Su]

Pronunciation: S + う sound, like the name "Sue."

-Don't forget that the final stroke veers to the left, and make sure to keep the loop nice and open. Japanese people often exaggerate the loop, so don't worry too much about making it too big.

-There's a kid swinging (su-eeneen) off the swing, yelling that he's going to sue somebody for this.

-Or imagine "Sue has a curl in her hair." Or if you're like me, you remember because you memorized the word desu. Desu is one of the most common Japanese words, and you'll soon get sick of writing it.

 

 

[spoiler=せ=Se]

Pronunciation: S + え sound, like in sensei.

-Keep in mind the first stroke slants up slightly. Also don't forget the hane that looks like a tooth here.

-Look at that mouth! What would someone like this say? And what a sexy tooth.

 

 

[spoiler=そ=So]

Pronunciation: S + お sound, like if you tell a long story to a friend and they go "So what?"

-Like き and さ, this can be written in an alternate way. Try to memorize both ways.

-This kana has a little songbird flapping its wings and singing a note from the scale. "So so so sooo!"

 

 

 

[spoiler=Ten-ten]

If you soften an S sound, you get the Z sound. So you get za for instance. The only exception is shi, which turns to ji instead of zi.

 

Za ji zu ze zo!

 

 

 

-Back to our bud Hiragana Drag-n-Drop! Now add this new set to the list. See if you can do it in under 30 seconds or stop after you've done it 5 times.

-Print or download this worksheet and again, fill in the boxes.

 

 

[spoiler=た ち つ て と]

One more after this! This is the T series, consisting of ta, chi, tsu, te, to.

This one has two oddballs: chi and tsu. Japanese doesn't have the ti and tu sounds, so they say these instead. Now, recently, with the borrowing of foreign words, Japan has found ways to express ti and tu, but no native Japanese words contain these sounds.

 

[spoiler=た=Ta]

Pronunciation: T + あ sound, like when the Brits say "ta."

-You'll notice the small こ inside this character.

-This is an easy one. It looks just like what it says.

 

 

[spoiler=ち=Chi]

Pronunciation: Ch + い sound. Like "cheap"

-Don't forget to curve the lines.

-This kana looks like a man's face, but it's missing something. The chin. Personally, I just remember that chi looks like the number 5.

 

 

[spoiler=つ=Tsu]

Pronunciation: Ts + う, or "eat soup."

-Did you notice it looks similar to う?

-Now tofugu has a super complicated way of remembering this. You put your hook in the water and pull up two (tsu) fish! However, personally I just remember that this character looks like the breaking wave of a tsunami and that helps.

 

 

[spoiler=て=Te]

Pronunciation: T + え sound, to make "te."

-Keep this character from looking like a 7 by imagining a large ball sitting in the curve.

-So this looks like the uppercase T and that helps a lot. Tofugu has you thinking of it as ten but you could also think of the fact it looks like a combination T+e somewhat.

-Or, if it helps, a friend pointed out once that it looks like a teeny penis and scrotum.

 

 

[spoiler=と=To]

Pronunciation: T + お to make "toe."

-Why are the O kana always so strange?

-Just think of this as someone's toe with a splinter in it.

 

 

 

[spoiler=Ten-ten]

Soften the T sound and you get D! Now, there are two exceptions. Chi, which changes to ji, and Tsu, which changes to zu. You might think that they sound exactly like the dakuten form of the S-series, but you'd be wrong. It's good to remember them as ji and zu, but it's also good to remember the exact sound is closer to dzi and dzu. However, the dakuten form of chi and tsu are fairly rare, so you shouldn't need to worry too much about this.

 

Da ji zu de do!

 

 

 

-Again back to Hiragana Drag-n-Drop! Try and do this in 40 seconds or less or when you've done it 5 times.

-Now a new resource! Go to Real Kana. Check the first four columns (vowels, K, S, T) and their dakuten forms (G, Z, D). Uncheck the katakana if they're checked. Then go to Options and check all typefaces. This will be a good way of learning to tell apart different styles. Try to do this for 5-10 minutes. I usually do this until I get 100 correct, and then move on.

-Print or download this worksheet and work on it as instructed. Don't forget to pay special attention to the exceptions such as し, ち, and つ.

 

 

[spoiler=な に ぬ ね の]

Last set for today! N series this time: na, ni, nu, ne, no. No irregulars this time around, thankfully. Pay close attention to the loops in nu and ne, because there are other characters that look exactly the same, just without the loops. Ten-ten also cannot be applied to this series.

[spoiler=な=Na]

Pronunciation: N + あ, like "nah."

-Keep in in mind the third stroke veers off to the right somewhat.

-Think of this as a naughty nun kneeling before the cross, asking for forgiveness for her naughty ways. The third stroke is her veil, the loop is her seated form, and the cross should also be a big giveaway with this kana.

 

 

[spoiler=に=Ni]

Pronunciation: N + に, like the Knights who say Ni, or "knee."

-Make sure the two horizontal strokes are not perfectly parallel.

-Do you see the needle and thread here?

 

 

[spoiler=ぬ=Nu]

Pronunciation: N + う sound, so "nu" or "noon."

-Don't forget to focus on the loop!

-To me it looks more like a pretzel, but think of this as a bundle of noodles. Or a noodle pretzel.

 

 

[spoiler=ね=Ne]

Pronunciation: N + え sound, making "ne" as in "never." "Never ever will I remember all this crap," is what I thought when I was first learning this.

-Again, don't forget the loop! Also the vertical stroke is completely straight, like a pillar that will never fall.

-So tofugu has a weird way of remembering this by thinking of this like "Nelly the cat." A better way is just to remember neko means cat and it looks like a cat. Or, if you're me, you'll just see that the kana looks like a combination N + e.

 

 

[spoiler=の=No]

Pronunciation: N + お sound to make "no" or "nose."

-Notice how perfect of an oval this kana is.

-This looks like a pig nose, but to me it looks more like a no sign, and that's how I remember it.

 

 

 

-Back to our old friend Hiragana Drag-n-Drop. Try to do this all in 50 seconds or less or until you've done it 5 times.

-I don't have a worksheet for you this time, but I do recommend you visit Real Kana again, this time adding the N series.

 

 

[spoiler=Notes]

A few notes:

• The A kana seem to be the bulgiest
• The I kana are the easiest for me for some reason
• The U kana usually seem to be facing sideways
• The E kana are usually some of the most interesting to look at
• The O kana always seem to be the oddballs of the group

Don't ask me why I think that, I just do. Anyway, it's another way for me to remember these characters, so maybe it'll help you too, I don't know.

 

 

[spoiler=Resources]

For those of you who want more, here are some links.

-The self-study room lets you hear the sounds from a Japanese native, though if you've been clicking the links, you've hopefully been hearing them already.

-These handwriting practice sheets are very useful if you want to practice writing the kana you've learned on your own.

-Tofugu is the main blog I've been using to supplement my Japanese learning. I recommend it for sure!

-I've been recommended the Tangorin Japanese Dictionary as one of the best online Japanese dictionaries out there.

-For more culture and stuff, I recommend just searching for Japanese blogs. Gaijinpot and This Japanese Life have been recommended to me, but I haven't had the chance to read through them yet.

 

 

 

So now you've learned the first 25 characters, those and the ten-ten (or dakuten) kana give you the ability to read, write, and speak a total of 40 different sounds in Japanese!

 

Those that thought the last update was pretty short can hopefully be satisfied by this lengthy post, so yeah. And, uh...tell me your thoughts: if this was useful or boring, whether you want a new blogger (sorry, you're stuck with me), and what you think of my teaching style.

 

Welp, that took longer to write out than I thought it would. Still Thursday though, so I didn't miss my deadline, yay!