I'm sorry

I know that it is bad for me to do this but I have finals in two weeks and I need to study. I won't be able to post often untill June 9. I will post soon though.


If you aim at the castle, you'll end up in the sewers -Samuel Clemens (a.k.a Mark Twain)

すみません: Excuse Me

Ok so I had a very busy day yesterday and ended up not posting for this blog. Again I am very sorry for those who where expecting something to pop up soon. So for today's post I will explain more sentence structure today. Today I will teach how to place time in a sentence, be it telling time or doing something at a certain time. 

Time is read like so: 1-oclock or いちじ. じ stands for hour so you would place the number then hour.

Now in a sentence.

It is one oclock.

いま　は　いちじ　です。

By the way, いま means "now"

To ask for the time is using nan/nani added before the じ to explain what time. Then to make a sentence you simply add a か at the end of です.

Example:

いま　は　なんじ　ですか。

What time is it now?

Ok so now we can say what time it is! 

I will leave it at that. 

Vocab:

student がくせい

um... - あの

now - いま

English Language - ええご

yes - ええ

P.M. - ごご

A.M. -ごぜん

teacher/professor - せんせい

That's right - そうです

friend - ともだち

Japan - にほん

.. year student - 〜ねんせい

yes (in agreement) - はい

As my custamary goodbyes ar almost known I will no longer provide the translation for them. じゃまた！

おげんきですか : How are you?

こんばんは. So by now it should be clear that I'm teaching the typical greetings and some basic phrases of understanding in the title's of the posts. Today's is pornounced o gen ki des ka? (I don't know the pronounciation table of phonetics so if anyone could help with that then that would be great indeed). So this weekend seems like it will be somewhat empty in terms of having done nothing productive towards social life and all.

Today from occurrence of my dad getting a haircut today, his hair stylist is にほんじん (nihonjin or Japanese), and we had a ちょっと conversation. There is something new to teach about writting and pronounciation!
So i'm guessing most people would wonder how to even pronounce ちょっと. Well the small characters are unique in that they are used when someone wants to make a kya, kyo, kyu, jya, jyu, jyo, chya, chyu, chyo, etc. So what happens is that we take the -i vowel of the character and place ya, yo, or yu next to it n small and it alters the sound from chi to chyo.
Thats the first thing down, next is the small tsu which is used to add lenght to the next constanant or in english: make a double letter like tt in little, or nn in penny, or any other double constanants in Japanese.

Hopefully that is an explanation that somewhat makes sense to some.

Anyways, so what is this word ちょっと? It is written in romajii (roman letters in japanese) as chyotto. Chyotto literally means little and it can be used before the noun of a sentence to assign it as little.

It seems as though that vocabulary words would be a good idea at the moment but I am very tired. So as a sign of me being lazy, I'm going to post up vocab words tomorrow with a list page attached to this blog.

おやすみなさい: Good Night!

P.S. It seems that this blog is getting more trafic from other places than i would have expected. Maybe this won't be a waste of time?

こんにちは: Good Afternoon!

Ok, so I was somewhat busy at a friends house yesterday so I wasn't able to post. Today is a good day though as it is Friday or きんようび (kinyoobi)/ 金曜日 (in kanji it is literally gold day). So I have posted the two tables on the previous post, yet I forgot to mention how to pronounce the vowels in Japanese.

So without further ado, I'd like to show the easiest way to remember how to sound out the vowels:

In the order of a i u e o

Ah we soon get old.

So now we should know how to pronounce everthing, right?

えと, there is yet even more to remember, so there are the 46 base characters, yet for most of them, there are alternate ways to write them to make new sounds like ji ge za de do go etc.

Let me make the table:

あ - A	い - I	う - U	え - E	お - O
が - GA	ぎ - GI	ぐ - GU	げ- GE	ご - GO
ざ - ZA	じ - JI	ず - ZU	ぜ - ZE	ぞ - ZO
だ - DA	ぢ - JI	づ - ZU	で - DE	ど - DO
ば - BA	び - BI	ぶ - BU	べ - BE	ぽ - BO
ぱ - PA	ぴ - PI	ぷ - PU	ぺ - PE	ぽ - PO

The same things go for the katakana characters. Just use the same markings.

So There it is. Now tehre is more special ways of writting things to get the special sounds and I'll save that for later.
So now we can learn more vocabulary.

Mother- おかあさん (okaasan)
Father- おとうさん (otoosan)
older sister- おねえさん (oneesan)
older brother- おにいさん (oniisan)
younger sister- いもうと (imooto)
younger borther- おとうと (otooto)
job (work or occupation)- しごと (shigoto)
high school- こうこう (kookoo)
teacher (or professor)- せんせい (sensei)
telphone- でんわ (denwa)
name- なまえ (namae)
what (the question)- なに/あん (nani/nan)
anime-アニメ (anime)
and then...- えと (eto)

So this is a good list. I am hoping to make a subdomain with the vocab that I have listed in all the posts for all to see. I will write out the meanings for all and hopefully it will provide help for those who need it.

As for my normal good-byes: ではまた (see you later).

おはようございます！: Good Morning!

So now we know what good morning and good evening and good night are in japanese: おはようございます　こんばんは　おやすみなさい respectively. So lately I've been watching anime (of all types, movies and tv shows) and reading manga. Now for the anime, I've been watching all with japanese audio and english subtitles.

The most recent one that I just finished is called D.Gray Man or ディー・グレイマン. Its an interesting anime and the manga continues the story for various reasons. 

Let me explain the reasons to watch more anime in Japanese than in English. First, when hearing the language for a long period of time, a sense of understanding comes to me. For example, since I know a few words of what they really mean, I have begun to understand that the actual script is different from the translated text for the English subtitles. When I arrived at this point, then it dawned on me that I'm learning more and more Japanese!

Today's lesson is basic sentence structure:

We start off in all foreign languages with learning the This is that.

So in Japanese the structure is:

X は Y です

This is saying that X is Y or in some cases when replacing X with I (わたし), you get I am.

Example:

わたし　は　アメリカじん　です

which translates to

I am American.

Now to describe that someone is your friend, you would have a の which you would place like so:

XのY は　Z　です

Where this says that

The y of x is z.

Example:

わたしのせんもん　は　サエンス　です

which translates to:

My major is science.

So for this morning, I/m leaving with more vocab words that I know.

major-　せんもん

friend- ともだち

person(of a country)- じん

high school -こうこう

1-いち

2-に

3-さん

4-よん

5-ご

6-ろく

7-なな

8-はち

9-きゅう

10-じゅう

movies-あいが

TV-テレビ

coffee-コーヒー

meat-にく

delicious-おいし

わかりました: Understood

So I left off yesterday with the intro to the meanings of the two alphabets: ひらがな and かたかな. While the Japanese write in these two alphabets, the shorter way of writting a few many words or sounds is using かんじ.

Here is the ひらがな (Hiragana) Table

あ - A	い - I	う - U	え - E	お - O
か - KA	き - KI	く - KU	け - KE	こ - KO
さ - SA	し - SHI	す - SU	せ - SE	そ - SO
た - TA	ち - CHI	つ - TSU	て - TE	と - TO
な - NA	に - NI	ぬ - NU	ね - NE	の - NO
は - HA	ひ - HI	ふ - HU	へ - HE	ほ - HO
ま - MA	み - MI	む - MU	め - ME	も - MO
や - YA		ゆ - YU		よ - YO
ら - RA	り - RI	る - RU	れ - RE	ろ - RO
わ - WA		を - WO		ん - N

And here is the かたかな (Katakana) Table

ア - A	イ - I	ウ - U	エ - E	オ - O
カ - KA	キ - KI	ク - KU	ケ - KE	コ - KO
サ - SA	シ - SHI	ス - SU	セ - SE	ソ - SO
タ - TA	チ - CHI	ツ - TSU	テ - TE	ト - TO
ナ - NA	ニ - NI	ヌ - NU	ネ - NE	ノ - NO
ハ - HA	ヒ - HI	フ - HU	ヘ - HE	ホ - HO
マ - MA	ミ - MI	ム - MU	メ - ME	モ - MO
ヤ - YA		ユ - YU		ヨ - YO
ラ - RA	リ - RI	ル - RU	レ - RE	ロ - RO
ワ - WA		ヲ - WO		ン - N

So this concludes the two alphabets of Japanese. Now we know what it means when I would say アメリカ (amerika or  America). By now I have already memorized the two alphabets and I'm doing this to practice so as to not loose touch of any of the characters.

So for today, I'm including some vocab words that some would want to know:

I (for your self) - わたし
U.S.A. - アエリカ
France- フランス
Japan- にほん (hint: It doesn't actually say Japan, it is said as nihon or nipon)
college- だいがく
language (like English language) - ~ご (ex. にほんご or えいご - English Language)

So I know that this post doesn't have much to talk about as it is just the table of the two alphabets and very few vocab words; however, I need to rest and I will try to post every day something new and exciting (maybe if you like anime tv/manga) and hopefully this will continue as a great blog!

As with yesterday: おやすみなさい。(Good night.)

こんばんは: Good Evening!

Well so far I am taking a Japanese 1 course at Santa Monica College. I am making this blog to help myself and maybe others who are doing the same in learning this language for the first time.

So far i have learned the two alphabets and approximately 20 かんじ which means kanji in roman letters. Kanji are all the official Chinese characters that have been borrowed into Japanese to shorten up the writting. This is in no way shortening the way to say things! Kanji is strictly to write with, you would read it the same way without!

So lets begin. The first alphabet is called ひらがな, which means hiragana. There are a total of 46 characters that are used in modern Japanese and I would input a table if i could but I don't think I will at the moment. Next post I will though for both alphabets. ひらがな is used for Japanese based words only! That means all words that originated in Japan are written with these characters.

This is where the second alphabet comes in handy, it is called かたかな or katakana. This alphabet has 45 characters only. This alphabet is used to form new words from different languages that didn't originate in Japanese: like the Wii or ウィイ. This comes in handy to say different words like computer and coffee.

Now these two alphabets are used to write out everything, yet the Japanese were smart! They decided to use Chinese characters to represent either one entire word or parts of words that are formed to make up words. For example, take weekend: it is derived from the words week and end. Now imagine that the word week could be written in one character instead of four characters, makes things simpler to read right? That is what kanji is used for.

...
It is late, and I have Chemistry in the morning so I must leave this as a first post for the new blog. Now to say good night: (in romanized japanese or romajii) oyasuminasai/おやすみなさい (in hiragana).