Hiragana

[`AdeRin]

As I've started to learn Japanese at university, I thought I would pass on some of the lessons First of all, I'm going to introduce you to hiragana, which is used for native Japanese words for which there are no kanji. This can include honorifics such as "-san" and "-kun" and also particles such as "kara" (which means "from").

Here is the hiragana chart:


As you can see, each hiragana character represents either a singular vowel (a, i, e, u, o), or a consonant+vowel combination. "N" is the only exception. Though it doesn't show it in the chart, there are two characters for "o". The one at the top of this chart, alongside the vowels, is used when the letter/sound "o" is part of the spelling of a word, whereas the "o" written like this is placed after a noun, and indicates that the noun is the direct object. For example, "Kutsu o kaimashita" = "I bought shoes" (Kutsu meaning shoes and kaimashita meaning to buy in the past tense). This participle is also written/said as "wo", though from my knowledge this is just a more traditional version, whereas "o" is more modern.

[`AdeRin]

I'm glad I could be of help! I will upload my lecture notes to the forum as .pdf files once I finally manage to type them up neatly (at the moment they're mostly intelligible squiggles on paper, hehe ^^")

I hope you manage to find something in Liverpool to keep your learning going There's nothing like being taught in person to learn a language.

[Stripe]

I'm in the process of learning hiragana at the moment (strangely enough, I'm learning it mostly through Vocaloid and UTAU, who'd've thought it?) and it is SO MUCH MORE COMPLICATED than I originally thought; I learnt Russian in school and picked up the Russian alphabet easily, but Japanese just won't stick with me, it seems ;__; I will persevere, though!!

[`AdeRin]

Ganbatte!! ^_^ I'm sure you'll get it in the end, it'll just take a lot of practice. I'm going to start tackling katakana over the Christmas holidays *eep*

[Stripe]

I know 'ra' in katakana! ... and nothing else!

Haha, I'm looking into uni courses teaching Japanese but I'm not sure if there's anything going on anywhere near I live, woe~ Seems like I'll be relying on My Japanese Coach for a while longer :'D

[`AdeRin]

Awesome! I know "ni", yay!!!! So between us we know two characters! We could write some good shit with that.... O___O

That's a shame that there isn't a lot going on near you I managed to get onto a Beginners Japanese module as my free choice option for my uni course, so that was pretty lucky!! Keep looking though, I'm sure there has to be something ^_^ If not, I'd recommend the textbook that we're using; it's called "Japanese for Busy People" and you get an awesome CD with it too

[Stripe]

Nira!
... I'm pretty sure that means leek? (Miku Hatsune fan get!)

[`AdeRin]

Mmm, leeks.... *blech* >__<

[XenLár]

"Blech" to the leeks on my part too. (I'm totally Kyo... lol)

If you're finding it hard to make them stick Shima try note cards with them drawn on and make silly little things to remember them.

It worked pretty good for faye-san when I was practicing with her for a test. It even made me learn them too! Lol.