Let's learn Kana!

So, the basics of the basics coming right up!

As we all know, Japanese is constructed from 3 different letter forms.

Hiragana - ひらがな

Katakana - カタカナ

Kanji

Hiragana is used for normal everyday Japanese words.

Katakana is used for forgein words such as names, countries and also borrowed words. You will come across many of them in places like starbucks.

Kanji is used a lot, and personally - is a pain in the backside! It seems daunting, I am not going to lie, it is difficult. Mostly because I learned a lot of Japanese before touching Kanji, whereas it is meant to be taught at the same time.

So, to drill in the Kana I decided to write up the charts! I do recommend making one of these yourself to get used to how to write it and recognising it. Draw it up, pencil it, ink it. That way you are re-writing it more than once and it might stick a little better.

Hiragana

 

I do apologise about the paper and the markings. The paper apparently hated the pencil I used.

 

Katakana

 

 

 

You will find that a lot of "Borrowed words" have a lot more characters than needed - this is because they need to make it sound like it would in English but their characters aren't like ours. So for example: Spain. they don't have "Sp" it would be スペイン "Supein" so take this into consideration when you are translating.

 

That is Kana! When I am posting my work with Kanji, I will be typing up the Kanji that the lesson is focusing on so you can see it properly. Do not worry about that.

 

Have fun!



Study tools!

So, this post is all about what tools I will be using during my studying.

All of my work is pretty much copy and paste as that is how I learn, writing it all out and keep writing it until I get it.

First off.

This book is available on Amazon. I find it very useful if you are starting out. It breaks it all up so its all English- Romanji- Hiragana and changes each part as you progress and learn more kana.

The second

 

Minna no Nihongo I. This book I bought while I was in Tokyo. Its more of a revision book and has a Kanji book that goes with it, you learn one chapter in this, then move onto the kaji book for a chapter, then move on. It is apparently used in schools, so I find it quite useful.

The final book I will eventually be using

Kanji Master.
This is a Japanese JLPT N5 Kanji Study book.  I bought this one in Tokyo also, however, it is all written in Japanese. I picked up the wrong one. I will be using it eventually to train myself to be able to read and understand Japanese. I think it will be quite useful for me later on.

Finally.

I would like to link the very useful and informative website Japanesepod101.com
This is very good for pronunciation and just general vocab, how sentences are formed.

They have PDF of the conversations to help you guide yourself through it and learn.

It is a subscription but it is only...$3 per month? So its not a huge amount of money, but don't stress yourself. You still get the audio without the subscription! I just found this very helpful for me as I was not around the pronunciation much, so it really does help.

These are the tools I will be using to help myself get to N5 and hopefully pass in June!

Any questions- feel free to ask.

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog!

This is where I will be posting my Japanese study progress.

It helps give me a confidence boost as I will know exactly what I have learnt and how far I am in progressing to get JLPT!

I hope this will help others to learn too.

Everything I post here will be copy and paste from a book I have.

My way of learning is to write it down and take it in as I am doing it. So there are no mistakes as it is all from JLPT books I bought in Tokyo.

Japanese is hard, but try and make it fun for yourself. Don't give up. It seems daunting, but you can do it.

頑張って！ (がんばって) (*＾▽＾)／