Hey everyone!
I want to become an English teacher in Japan. I've already visited for a month and know all the basics but, besides getting a degree, I need to obviously learn Japanese. I figured the best way to do this is to learn it with other people!
So, you lucky people you, if you ever wanted to learn some Japanese, now is the time!
WRITING HABITS TO PREVENT CONFUSION!
All romaji Japanese will be italicized
All romaji will be spelled right and will use Japanese pronounciation. desu
All unitalicized romaji will be spelled for pronounciation. dess
The current week/lesson will be bolded, after I learn to link, I'll link to the post start.
LANGUAGE PLANNER
Week 1 = basics of reading and writing, learn Hiragana
- HOMEWORK = Page 1
- STUDY TIPS 1 = Page 2
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 1 = Page 2
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 2 = Page 3
- VOCAB 1 = Page 3
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 3 = Page 3
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 4 = Page 3
- COUNTING = Page 3
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 5 = Page 4
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 6 = Page 4
Week 2 = use hiragana, start learning katakana (same way as hiragana), learn basic sentence
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 7 = Page 4
- BASIC SENTENCES = Page 4
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 8 = Page 4
- SENTENCE QUIZ 1 = Page 4
- VOCAB 2 = Page 4
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 9
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 10
- KATAKANA QUIZ 1
- KATAKANA QUIZ 2
- KATAKANA QUIZ 3
Week 3 = Verbs
these timelines are subject to change.
Part 1: Alphabet Basics
The Japanese have a 46 character alphabet which is written in two ways. Hiragana is written for anything native to Japan and Katakana is used for anything foreign. For example, father could be otousan (in hiragana) or papa (in katakana). Or meat is called niku (hiragana) but computers are called konpyuuta.
In Japanese, there are not many ways to spell things, so however it is spoken is most likely how it is spelled. You can see that from the computer example above.
We won't get into memorizing characters quite yet, first we need to know romaji which is when Japanese is written into English. My examples above were written in romaji because the forums support Japanese characters.
http://blog.asiahotels.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/japanese-alphabet.gif
this image is the easiest way to show how Japanese is broken up. Japanese only has 5 vowel. A I U E O. It then puts a consonant before the vowel. The consonants Japanese has are K S T N H M Y R W G Z D B P. This is in order. So meat has 4 characters. In Japanese, NiKu only has 2 characters.
Getting deeper into this, some characters can have " put after them to make a different sound. Ka Ki Ku Ke Ko would turn into Ga Gi Gu Ge Go, S into Z, T into D, and H into B. If you put a tiny degree sign (the circle) after H it turns into P.
This sounds really confusing...like teaching binary...but both binary and Japanese are easy to understand once it clicks.
LINKS
http://www.jetprogramme.org/
http://japanese.about.com/
I want to become an English teacher in Japan. I've already visited for a month and know all the basics but, besides getting a degree, I need to obviously learn Japanese. I figured the best way to do this is to learn it with other people!
So, you lucky people you, if you ever wanted to learn some Japanese, now is the time!
WRITING HABITS TO PREVENT CONFUSION!
All romaji Japanese will be italicized
All romaji will be spelled right and will use Japanese pronounciation. desu
All unitalicized romaji will be spelled for pronounciation. dess
The current week/lesson will be bolded, after I learn to link, I'll link to the post start.
LANGUAGE PLANNER
Week 1 = basics of reading and writing, learn Hiragana
- HOMEWORK = Page 1
- STUDY TIPS 1 = Page 2
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 1 = Page 2
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 2 = Page 3
- VOCAB 1 = Page 3
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 3 = Page 3
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 4 = Page 3
- COUNTING = Page 3
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 5 = Page 4
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 6 = Page 4
Week 2 = use hiragana, start learning katakana (same way as hiragana), learn basic sentence
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 7 = Page 4
- BASIC SENTENCES = Page 4
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 8 = Page 4
- SENTENCE QUIZ 1 = Page 4
- VOCAB 2 = Page 4
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 9
- HIRAGANA QUIZ 10
- KATAKANA QUIZ 1
- KATAKANA QUIZ 2
- KATAKANA QUIZ 3
Week 3 = Verbs
these timelines are subject to change.
Part 1: Alphabet Basics
The Japanese have a 46 character alphabet which is written in two ways. Hiragana is written for anything native to Japan and Katakana is used for anything foreign. For example, father could be otousan (in hiragana) or papa (in katakana). Or meat is called niku (hiragana) but computers are called konpyuuta.
In Japanese, there are not many ways to spell things, so however it is spoken is most likely how it is spelled. You can see that from the computer example above.
We won't get into memorizing characters quite yet, first we need to know romaji which is when Japanese is written into English. My examples above were written in romaji because the forums support Japanese characters.
http://blog.asiahotels.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/japanese-alphabet.gif
this image is the easiest way to show how Japanese is broken up. Japanese only has 5 vowel. A I U E O. It then puts a consonant before the vowel. The consonants Japanese has are K S T N H M Y R W G Z D B P. This is in order. So meat has 4 characters. In Japanese, NiKu only has 2 characters.
Getting deeper into this, some characters can have " put after them to make a different sound. Ka Ki Ku Ke Ko would turn into Ga Gi Gu Ge Go, S into Z, T into D, and H into B. If you put a tiny degree sign (the circle) after H it turns into P.
This sounds really confusing...like teaching binary...but both binary and Japanese are easy to understand once it clicks.
LINKS
http://www.jetprogramme.org/
http://japanese.about.com/
