Lesson 1: The alphabets.
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There are four main alphabets in Japanese: hiragana, katakana, romaji, and kanji.
Romaji is the Latin alphabet.
It's actually a lot more complicated than it sounds like, because there are quite a few different versions used in different places.
Hiragana is the basic alphabet used to write everything that's not written in one of the others and is also used for furigana, or pronunciation.
ＡＩＵＥＯ
あいうえお
Ｋかきくけこ
Ｓさしすせそ
Ｔたちつてと
Ｎなにぬねの
Ｈはひふへほ
Ｍまみむめも
Ｙや ゆ よ
Ｒらりるれろ
Ｗわ をん
Each letter, with the exception of the vowels and ん is pronounced as a consonant with a vowel.
This table shows the combinations.
For example, ら would be ra, because it is in the R group with the A vowel.
There are a few letters with odd pronunciations.
These are:
しーshi
ちーchi
つーtsu
ふーfu
んーn
Katakana is used mainly for foreign words and certain colloquialisms.
ＡＩＵＥＯ
アイウエオ
Ｋカキクケコ
Ｓサシスセソ
Ｔタチツテト
Ｎナニヌネノ
Ｈハヒフヘホ
Ｍマミムメモ
Ｙヤ ユ ヨ
Ｒラリルレロ
Ｗワ ヲン
Finally, you have kanji, the infamous Chinese character-words.
We'll save those for later.
Learn these well, there will be no assignment, as your only task is to know them for bloody well everything else.
I'll be teaching stroke order (kakikata) for the letters in another lesson, this one is just for recognizing and reading the letters.
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Topic: Bay12の日本語のクラス (Read 6150 times)