| Learn Japanese! |
by Gina Capri and Sarah Winiger. (Gina did the pronuciation, Sarah did the memorization of Characters.)
1.) First, a little lesson in pronunciation. We will start with the vowels, as those are the most commonly mispronounced sounds.
a ~ like "a" in father
i ~ like "i" in machine
u ~ like "oo" in moon
e ~ like "e" in egg
o ~ like "o" in hohoho
This is exactly like Spanish is prounced, so if you've taken Spanish before, give yourself a pat on the back and move on. If you have trouble seeing that the "e" in egg sounds like "ay", go have your head examined. If you are just a humble accepting person trying to learn Japanese, practice it until you're sure you know all the sounds by heart.
2.) On to the "consonants" which are always mixed with a vowel except in the case of n, which I will tell you about later.
k before a, i, u, e, or o is prounounced like "c" in "coot". Before ya, yu, or yo, it is pronounced like 'c' in 'cute'.
g before a, i, u, e, or o is pronounced like the g in begone. Before ya, yu, or yo, it is
pronounced as in regular.
s sounds like 's' in 'secret, z like 'z' in 'zinc'.
t sounds like 't' in 'time'; d like 'd' in 'day'
n sounds like 'n' in 'nevermore', and followed by ya, yu, or yo, it sounds like the 'n' in
'neat'
h resembles the 'h' in 'hot', and f the 'f' in Fuu
b is like 'b' in bat, p like 'p' in petunia.
m is like 'm' in 'martyr'
y is like the 'y' in 'yam'
r is a mix of r, l, and d all together at the same time. ra sounds like la, ri like dee, ru like doo, re like day, and ro like doh.
w sounds like 'w' in 'water'
and last but not least!
How to Pronounce the infamous 'n', which is a character all by itself: Try saying mmmmmmm............. through your nose. This is the 'n' sound!
3.) Now, practice, practice, practice! And when you are confident, go onto lesson 2!
Lesson 2~ Memorize the Characters!
In order to write Japanese, you obbviously need to know the characters. Memorizing the characters first will help you learn the words.
There are 3 alphibets in Japan: Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji. There is also Romanji, it is the words written in Japanese characters swiched so it is written in Roman characters, "konnichiwa" is romanji.
Katakana is used for words of foreign origin and official documents. It is also used for Video games (Gameboy, sega, playstation, comp. games, nintendo......). Katakana is the easyest to learn. Hiragana is used for prefixes and suffixes to kanji. Kanji is adopted Chinese characters. Kanji is the hardest to learn because there is thousands of characters to learn.
First, let us learn Katakana. Click here for all the characters. I drew all the characters in paint, but they are accurate. Do not continue untill you have these characters memorized.
Once you have memorized Katakana, You should learn Hiragana. Click here for the Characters. Do not continue untill you have Katakana and Hiragana memorized.
Now you should learn Kanji. Go find all the thousands of characters on some other site. I don't feel like spending months working on writing them all out.
If you memrized all the Characters, you can now write Japanese!! Your probably thinking "Wow! I can write Japanese! But I don't know any words!". Well I suggest you buy a Japanese-English dictionary and memorize words you look up. Or you can just find one on the internet. One online Japanese-English Dictionary I found is ------ .
Or you can read some words I posted here.
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