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[hotaru987sensei]

Just a little reblog since I'll be working on uploading part 3 soon

Hiragana and Katakana Part. 2

I hope everything is comming along well with your studies! Are you guys ready for part 2, because I know I am!

So lets get started.

Now that we’ve got a handling on the sounds that are the foundation of being able to speak Japanese its time to expand on that a little bit. As some of you may have noticed the letters that would make up the sounds for

D, G, P, B, J, and Z are missing. Theres just one group of sounds for us to learn after this so lets not waste any more time!

First of all take a few seconds to look at the chart above and see which characters are and aren’t included. Also look and see whats different between these characters and how they normally look.

Are you back? What did you notice?

The first thing you should’ve seen is that not all of the characters are included. It’s only the characters from the H, S, K, and T groups. The second should be the symbols on top of these letters. It’s these two symbols that give us our second variety of sounds.

Those symbols are called Dakuten and Handakuten.

Dakuten

This is the quotation looking symbol that you see over the letters. Of our special letters most of them use this with the exception of one. The term for little quotations being added is usually shortened to Tenten. So if someone says you’re missing a tenten in this sense they’re probably referring to the quotation like symbol on the character.

The ones that use this are our K, S, T, and H line. So for example:

1) か Ka with the the dakuten becomes が Ga. Same with eveything else in the line.

かKa ぎGIぐGu げGe ごGo

2) さSa gets changed to ざZa. There is an exception with is (shi)し. It instead gets changed to (Ji)じ.

ざZa じJi ずZu ぜZe ぞZo

3) (Ta)た goes to (Da)だ. There are two special ones in this row, which is (chi)ち and (tsu)つ.

Chi with the dakuten is hardly used(I could be wrong), but I’ve rarely if ever come across it in this form. I cant even think of any words that use this. If you do come across it then it would be read similar to how (ji)じ. When typing it in on a keyboard you would write it as Du

As for the second one there are two ways it could be spelled out when writing it in English: (zu) or (dzu). When learning it I personally like the (dzu) one because it sounds closer to how the letter should sound, but for spelling purposes it probably looks better with the (zu) reading. When typing it on a keyboard you’d write it as Du.

だTa *ぢJi/Di *づ Zu/Dzu/Du でDe どDo

4) The last one in this list is our good friend the ‘H’ family. Now unlike the other groups, the ‘H’ family is pretty big. Of course we have the one that adds the tenten. It changes our はHa to ばBa

ばBa びBi ぶBu べBe ぼBo

This also brings us to the second symbol that changes the sound.

2. Handakuten

Luckily this symbol is only attached to one group, and that’s our ‘H’ group. Which is pretty nice since we don’t have to remember too much lol. It’s already a lot to take in. So if you see a small little circle on the letter it changes ‘H’ to ‘P’.

For example:

ぱPa ぴPi ぷPu ぺPe ぽPo

For this one, similar to how the first one had a shortened form of tenten, in this case if you forgot to write the circle on the character people might start saying maru. Maru is the Japanese word for circle.

Of course, all of this can be translated to the katakana characters too.

カキクケコ　ガギグゲゴ

サシスセソ　ザジズぜぞ

タチツテト　ダヂヅデド

ハヒフヘホ　バビブベボ　パピプペポ

We still have one more set of character combinations to learn and then we can get into some sentence and basic grammar stuff! I know it’s taking a while but please bare with me lol. You can always send me asks for any sorts of questions if you’re doing self study ^^

Hiragana and Katakana part 1

Hiragana and Katakana part 3

[hotaru987sensei]

Hiragana and Katakana mini test 2

Hello! I'm back with another test for you all using the new set of characters we learned. Good luck!!

が　2. ぶ　3. ぱ　4. じ　5. づ　6. ぼ　7. ご　8. ぴ　9. で　10. だ

How did you do? Perfect? Great!! Let's give katakana a go! Be careful on the first two! They can be tricky so look very carefully hehe

ヅ　2. ジ　3. ペ　4. ゲ　5. ズ　6. ガ　7. ポ　8. バ　9. ザ　10. ピ

OK and finished! Let me know how you did! Was it hard? Easy? The answers are below the cut!

Hiragana answers

1. ga　2. bu　3. pa　4. ji　5. du　6. bo　7. go　8. pi　9. de　10. da

Katakana answers

1. du　2. ji　3. pe　4. ge　5. zu　6. ga　7. po　8. ba　9. za　10. pi

[hotaru987sensei]

Hiragana and Katakana Part. 2

I hope everything is comming along well with your studies! Are you guys ready for part 2, because I know I am!

So lets get started.

Now that we’ve got a handling on the sounds that are the foundation of being able to speak Japanese its time to expand on that a little bit. As some of you may have noticed the letters that would make up the sounds for

D, G, P, B, J, and Z are missing. Theres just one group of sounds for us to learn after this so lets not waste any more time!

First of all take a few seconds to look at the chart above and see which characters are and aren’t included. Also look and see whats different between these characters and how they normally look.

Are you back? What did you notice?

The first thing you should’ve seen is that not all of the characters are included. It’s only the characters from the H, S, K, and T groups. The second should be the symbols on top of these letters. It's these two symbols that give us our second variety of sounds.

Those symbols are called Dakuten and Handakuten.

Dakuten

This is the quotation looking symbol that you see over the letters. Of our special letters most of them use this with the exception of one. The term for little quotations being added is usually shortened to Tenten. So if someone says you’re missing a tenten in this sense they’re probably referring to the quotation like symbol on the character.

The ones that use this are our K, S, T, and H line. So for example:

1) か Ka with the the dakuten becomes が Ga. Same with eveything else in the line.

かKa ぎGIぐGu げGe ごGo

2) さSa gets changed to ざZa. There is an exception with is (shi)し. It instead gets changed to (Ji)じ.

ざZa じJi ずZu ぜZe ぞZo

3) (Ta)た goes to (Da)だ. There are two special ones in this row, which is (chi)ち and (tsu)つ.

Chi with the dakuten is hardly used(I could be wrong), but I’ve rarely if ever come across it in this form. I cant even think of any words that use this. If you do come across it then it would be read similar to how (ji)じ. When typing it in on a keyboard you would write it as Du

As for the second one there are two ways it could be spelled out when writing it in English: (zu) or (dzu). When learning it I personally like the (dzu) one because it sounds closer to how the letter should sound, but for spelling purposes it probably looks better with the (zu) reading. When typing it on a keyboard you’d write it as Du.

だTa *ぢJi/Di *づ Zu/Dzu/Du でDe どDo

4) The last one in this list is our good friend the ‘H’ family. Now unlike the other groups, the ‘H’ family is pretty big. Of course we have the one that adds the tenten. It changes our はHa to ばBa

ばBa びBi ぶBu べBe ぼBo

This also brings us to the second symbol that changes the sound.

2. Handakuten

Luckily this symbol is only attached to one group, and that’s our ‘H’ group. Which is pretty nice since we don’t have to remember too much lol. It’s already a lot to take in. So if you see a small little circle on the letter it changes ‘H’ to ‘P’.

For example:

ぱPa ぴPi ぷPu ぺPe ぽPo

For this one, similar to how the first one had a shortened form of tenten, in this case if you forgot to write the circle on the character people might start saying maru. Maru is the Japanese word for circle.

Of course, all of this can be translated to the katakana characters too.

カキクケコ　ガギグゲゴ

サシスセソ　ザジズぜぞ

タチツテト　ダヂヅデド

ハヒフヘホ　バビブベボ　パピプペポ

We still have one more set of character combinations to learn and then we can get into some sentence and basic grammar stuff! I know it’s taking a while but please bare with me lol. You can always send me asks for any sorts of questions if you’re doing self study ^^

Hiragana and Katakana part 1

Hiragana and Katakana part 3

[hotaru987sensei]

Hiragana and Katakana Part 1 

So before getting into Japanese there are some fundamentals that we all need to know. You may already know it, but bare with me and let's have a bit of a review.

For Japanese, you may or may not know but there are three styles of writing. It's fairly easy to tell them apart so there is no need to worry about forgetting which is which. In this post we’ll learn about two of them.

The first is called 'Hiragana'.

You can always tell it's Hiragana by how soft and round the characters look. There are a total of 46 characters and each one follows a simple sound profile. It's always consonant followed by a vowel. For a pronunciation guide you can follow this link to youtube

How did you do? Ready to try putting them together? Awesome!

Try reading this ねこ

Did you get it? The reading for it is ね(ne)こ(ko)

Congrats! You just said 'cat' in Japanese! Here is some other's to practice with.

いぬ

いけめん*

ほん

すき

(1) inu = dog (2) ikemen = handsome guy (3) hon = book (4) suki = to like

I have the feeling that you guys knocked that out of the ball park! Let's try leveling that up a bit and make a sentence. Try reading this.

ほん が(ga) すき で(de)す。

Can you guess what it means? If you said "I like books" then give yourself a gold star because that's right! You can change the part in red to anything you want. Try it!

You may also be wondering what are those thing that look like quotation marks above the か and て, but don't worry I will explain it in my part 2 Post. For now let's get to the next set of characters: Katakana

Katakana, unlike hiragana, doesn't have soft pretty curve to it. Instead its more blocky and rigid. As you can see from the chart, there are more straight lines when writing in katakana.

HOWEVER, the pronunciation for both katakana and hiragana are the exact same!!

Now isn't that just lovely? It may be hard because you have to learn two different characters for the same sound, but at least its not 46 completely new types of sounds! Now that would be a headache.

You might be thinking right about now, “Ok, whats the point of having two characters if they sound the same? That’s just more work!”

Trust me, I had those same questions. Even now I find myself forgetting how to write in katakana every now and then. However, there is a purpose for it. while I wont get too in depth for now, one of the most common uses for katakana is when they are used in loan words.

By that I mean words that aren’t originally Japanese. For example the English word ’illustration’, when translated to Japanese become a shortened version and is just ’Illasto’

Japan took that word and incorporated it into its own language so when written its commonly done so as イラスト. Katakana is also used in slang words. Earlier we used the word いけめん, a slang used for good looking men, but there was an astericks beside it. That’s because, it’s typically written in katakana. For my fellow otome game players you can see this in the Japanese game titles.

イケメン王子　Ikemen ouji イケメンバ(ba)ンパ(pa)イヤ Ikemen vampire イケメン源氏伝　Ikemen genjiden

That only scratches the surface of other ways katakana is used, but you can always ask me if you have any questions.

Theres one more picture so you can see the hiragana and katakana side by side comparison!

Next time: Well learn about how to write them and and the remaining sounds left out of this post.

[hotaru987sensei]

Hi Hotaru! I have a question.

how is ha は (wa) a topic maker? and how is it used?

Thank you for answering and have a nice day! 😺

Hello! Congrads on being my first ask on this blog!

For your first question on "how" is は(ha) is a partial, I can't exactly say why.

I mean it was just how they decided to use it. It's like asking why does d-o-g put together spell dog. That's just how it is lol. If there is an explanation out there then I don't know. If I misunderstood your question 

my bad lol.

Now getting into the partical part. Honestly this particle haunts me in my dreams and I sometimes have a hard time knowing when and how to use it. Even Japanese people, if you ask them, will sometimes be just as confused about where to put this particle.

Now the first thing to know with は, is that while there are many other particles in the Japanese language は is a bit special because it’s pronunciation changes. Normally は is read as (ha), but when it’s used as a particle the reading becomes (wa). I assumed you already knew that but for the others that may not I thought I should explain it first lol.

As you said the は is the particle that marks what is the topic of that sentence. So basically whatever it is that comes right before は(wa), that’s what/who the sentence is about. So for example,

watashi wa(ha)  Hotaru987 desu わたし　   は　   ホタル987   です

In this sentence I am saying “I am Hotaru987”. The topic of the sentence is わたし, which means “I”. So you know what the person who’s name is Hotaru987 isn’t, him or her or some person over there it’s me. Though in this case even without the “わたしは” part most people would understand your probably talking about yourself in this case. Let’s try another example.

Kore  wa(ha)   inu    desu これ　   は　  いぬ　です

This sentence reads “This is a dog.” In this sentence the topic is marked as ‘this’ because it’s talking about whatever ‘this’ in the sentence is. Now the ‘this’ in the sentence is a dog, but it could be anything. A hat, a boat, food, anything.

Which brings me to my next point. は, though it marks the topic isn’t really trying to emphasize the topic. While of course understanding what the topic is, is important, the thing to take away from this sentence is what comes after. 

Kibun   wa(ha)   dou   desu  ka? きぶん　  は　   どう   です　か。

This sentence asks “How are you feeling?” The topic of the conversation is revolving around your きぶん, your physical condition, and now that we understand that, the part that comes after is where we get the information what we want from the question. Which is to know ‘how’.

Another useful thing about は is that it is also used when comparing two things. For example,

Chisai        inu     wa(ha)     suki   kedo,        ちいさい　いぬ　   は     すき　けど　   

ooki          inu     wa(ha)   suki       jaarimasen  おおきい　 いぬ　    は　    すき　 じゃありません。

“I like small dogs, but I don’t like big dogs.” Because this particle can be used to make comparisons, there is a point you should be careful of. Let’s say for example you want to say, “Hotaru987 has a cute smile!” Firstly, thank you for the compliment! Now for the sentence, 

Hotaru987   wa(ha)    egao    wa(ha)    kawaii     desu. ホタル987       は　　えがお　    は　　かわいい　です

Simple right? Well, not quite. Remember how we said は is used in comparisons? Well when you construct your sentence like this, it’s not a compliment at all. It’s actually pretty rude. This sentence implies that 

“Yeah, Hotaru987 has a cute smile (but that’s all she’s got going for her).” Or maybe “Hotaru987 has a cute smile, (but she’s not very smart).” 

So you have to be careful. In this case there is another partial we use, which is が(ga) So the correct way to say it would be

Hotaru987   wa(ha)    egao     ga     kawaii    desu. ホタル987       は　　えがお　    が　　かわいい　です

Knowing where and when to use this particular is really just about practice, practice, practice. I hope that my explanation was helpful. If I need to clarify something please let me know.

わたし = I いぬ = Dog すき = verb meaning “to like” おおきい = big/large ちいさい = small えがお = smile かわいい = cute きぶん = feeling/mood

[hotaru987sensei]

Hiragana and Katakana mini test 1

Hello again! How is that studying coming along? were you able to memorize some of the letters? How about a short test? First hiragana.

あ　2. か　3. は　4. よ　5. ほ　6. し　7. に　8. お　9. ぬ　10. り

How did you do? Perfect? Great!! Let's give katakana a go!

1.　マ　2. ロ　3. イ　4. ケ　5. 二　6. 力　7. 匕　8. ヤ　9. キ　10. ワ

OK and finished! Let me know how you did! Was it hard? Easy? The answers are below the cut!

Hiragana answers 1. a　2. ka　3. ha　4. yo　5. ho　6. shi　7. ni　8. o　9. nu　10. ri

Katakana answers 1. ma　2. ro　3. i　4. ke　5. ni　6. ka　7. hi　8. ya　9. ki　10. wa

[hotaru987sensei]

Hiragana and Katakana Part 1 

So before getting into Japanese there are some fundamentals that we all need to know. You may already know it, but bare with me and let's have a bit of a review.

For Japanese, you may or may not know but there are three styles of writing. It's fairly easy to tell them apart so there is no need to worry about forgetting which is which. In this post we’ll learn about two of them.

The first is called 'Hiragana'.

You can always tell it's Hiragana by how soft and round the characters look. There are a total of 46 characters and each one follows a simple sound profile. It's always consonant followed by a vowel. For a pronunciation guide you can follow this link to youtube

How did you do? Ready to try putting them together? Awesome!

Try reading this ねこ

Did you get it? The reading for it is ね(ne)こ(ko)

Congrats! You just said 'cat' in Japanese! Here is some other's to practice with.

いぬ

いけめん*

ほん

すき

(1) inu = dog (2) ikemen = handsome guy (3) hon = book (4) suki = to like

I have the feeling that you guys knocked that out of the ball park! Let's try leveling that up a bit and make a sentence. Try reading this.

ほん が(ga) すき で(de)す。

Can you guess what it means? If you said "I like books" then give yourself a gold star because that's right! You can change the part in red to anything you want. Try it!

You may also be wondering what are those thing that look like quotation marks above the か and て, but don't worry I will explain it in my part 2 Post. For now let's get to the next set of characters: Katakana

Katakana, unlike hiragana, doesn't have soft pretty curve to it. Instead its more blocky and rigid. As you can see from the chart, there are more straight lines when writing in katakana.

HOWEVER, the pronunciation for both katakana and hiragana are the exact same!!

Now isn't that just lovely? It may be hard because you have to learn two different characters for the same sound, but at least its not 46 completely new types of sounds! Now that would be a headache.

You might be thinking right about now, “Ok, whats the point of having two characters if they sound the same? That’s just more work!”

Trust me, I had those same questions. Even now I find myself forgetting how to write in katakana every now and then. However, there is a purpose for it. while I wont get too in depth for now, one of the most common uses for katakana is when they are used in loan words.

By that I mean words that aren’t originally Japanese. For example the English word ’illustration’, when translated to Japanese become a shortened version and is just ’Illasto’

Japan took that word and incorporated it into its own language so when written its commonly done so as イラスト. Katakana is also used in slang words. Earlier we used the word いけめん, a slang used for good looking men, but there was an astericks beside it. That’s because, it’s typically written in katakana. For my fellow otome game players you can see this in the Japanese game titles.

イケメン王子　Ikemen ouji イケメンバ(ba)ンパ(pa)イヤ Ikemen vampire イケメン源氏伝　Ikemen genjiden

That only scratches the surface of other ways katakana is used, but you can always ask me if you have any questions.

Theres one more picture so you can see the hiragana and katakana side by side comparison!

Hiragana and Katakana part 2

[hotaru987sensei]

Hello! I just want to say it may be a few days before I get everything started BUT feel free to send me any questions if you already have them.

[hotaru987sensei]

Hello!! This is the first post of my new Japanese language learning blog!!

私のことについて (about me):

I'm 29 years old and currently live in Japan as an English teacher. While that's not my end all be all plan, it was the quickest and easiest way to get back to Japan lol. I've always liked learning languages and have always thought I'd like to teach Japanese if I could. I didn't care so much if it was in a school or not, I just enjoy it. So, I thought why not try to do a little something here? I've also had a long time dream to become a translator and/or interpreter. You can call me Hotaru/Hotaru-sensei/sensei, which ever you’d like. Well anyway, that’s enough about me :p

ブログの目的 (purpose of this blog):

It’s so we can all learn Japanese in a fun and (hopefully) easy way. There are no stupid questions, so please ask if you have them. Often times you aren’t the only one who has that same question. And don’t be scared to ask the same question over and over. Keep asking until you understand, I promise I won’t mind. I also want to learn more Japanese so we'll be in this together.

Everyone of all ages are welcome, however do not share your age if you are a minor!!

I know that I personally wouldn’t do anything with that information, but I don't speak for everyone. Keeping your age secret is for your protection.

日本語能力 (Japanese ability):

There is a government sponsored test for Japanese called the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). On that my level is probably n3, which is right in the middle. So I'm not exactly perfect, but I'm confident enough that I can teach basic Japanese. If you know my other blog then you know about my skill level. I'll try my best to answer any question I can, but I'm still learning too, so if I can't answer cut me some slack, lol.

Of course even if you aren’t a beginner you are still welcome!! In fact please come!! This way you can teach me too!

間違えの時 (If you make a mistake)

It's fine! It happens all the time. No need to be embarrassed, so just brush it off and keep going. If I make a mistake please let me know and correct me. If some else made a mistake and I didn’t catch it feel free to comment as well!

But be respectful when you do!

ゼロトレランス (zero tolerance)

Doing the following will get you blocked without question.

Not acting like a respectable human being. I shouldn’t have to say any more than that, right? 募金(donations) here

Of course I’m not forcing anyone but ya know if ya want to to help a sister out by all means lol. I’m more of a frappuccino gal but I like coffee too :p

With that being said let’s have fun!! 😊 楽しいましょうね！

click here to take you to the study masterlist(under construction)