Lesson 3: Common Japanese Greetings

I have listed the most commonly used Japanese greetings. This would come handy for those who are planning to visit japan and know nothing about the language. Japanese people are very polite, they greet even strangers.

Lesson 2: Transcribing Double Consonants

There is another small letter つ, which is used when transcribing double consonants such as tt and pp.

Examples:

かった            katta      (won)

さっか            sakka      (writer)

はっぱ           happa      (leaf)

ざっし            zasshi      (magazine)

The right way to pronounce these words is by having a little pause on double consonants (e.g. katta is read as kat pause ta). Please take note of this because there are a lot of Japanese words that may mean different if not pronounced properly (e.g. katta-won while kata-shoulder).

Please take note also that double consonant n's as in sannen (3 years), are written with ん + a Hiragana with an initial n sound (な,に,ぬ,ね,の).

Examples:

さんねん       sannen     (3 years)
あんない       annai       (guide)

When the same vowel is placed one right after the other, the pronunciation of the vowel becomes about twice as long as the single vowel. Be sure to hold the sound long enough, because the length of the vowel can change one word to another.

aa          おばあさん      obaasan       (Grandmother)　          cf.    おばさん         obasan     (Aunt)
ii            おじいさん　   ojiisan         (Grandfather)                        おじさん         ojisan       (Uncle)
uu          すうじ              suuji            (number)

ee       The long ee sound is usually transcribed by adding い to an e-vowel Hiragana. There are few       words, however in which え is used instead of い.    
            えいが            eega              (movie)
            おねえさん      oneesan         (big sister)

oo        The long oo sound is in most cases transcribed by adding and う to an o-vowel Hiragana. There are however, words in which the long vowel is transcribed with an お, for historical reasons.
            ほうりつ          hooritsu         (law)
            とお                too                (ten)

The pronunciation of Katakana and its combinations are the same as those of Hiragana except for long vowels which are written with ー.

Example
カー                kaa                     (car)
スキー            sukii                    (ski)
スーツ            suutsu                  (suit)
ケーキ            keeki                    (cake)
ボール            booru                   (ball)

Vowels to be dropped

The vowels i and u are sometimes dropped when placed between voiceless consonants (k,s,t,p and h) or at the end of the utterance preceded by voiceless consonants.

Example:

すきです。        s(u)kidesu         (Like it)

Proceed to next lesson.

Lesson 1: Japanese Writing Systems

There are 3 kinds of characters in Japanese: HIRAGANA, KATAKANA, and KANJI. All three characters can be seen in a single sentence.

Example:

テレビを見ます。

Watch television.

テレビ        -   (Katakana)

見               -  (Kanji)

ます           -   (Hiragana)

Hiragana and Katakana are like alphabets, each characters represent sounds. As you can see above, Hiragana has a roundish shape and is used for conjugation endings, function words and native Japanese words not covered by Kanji.

Katakana on the other hand has rather straight lines and is normally used for writing loanwords and foreign names. I find it hard to read Katakana than Hiragana and you'll be surprised how Japanese converts an English word to its corresponding Japanese words using Katakana.

Kanji or Chinese Characters, represent not just sounds but also meanings. Mostly, Kanji are for nouns and the stems of the verb and adjectives. Sometimes even if you cannot read the word you can understand the word because of its Kanji. Kanji is the hardest among the three, because each kanji can have 2 or more readings plus each characters has many strokes.

I have uploaded a Hiragana and a Katakana chart on my Google Docs and you may access it here.

Hiragana Chart

Katakana Chart

The good thing about those charts is that you can see the stroke order of each characters. It is a good practice to follow the right stroke order specially if you are writing a Kanji. Another good practice would be practice writing on equally square box at first, something like this

Practice Sheet

This would enable you to write all characters properly. All the characters including Kanji no matter how complicated it is has the same width and height. 

In addition to basic Hiragana and Katakana characters, there are also Hiragana and Katakana with Diacritical marks and Hiragana and Katakana from contracted sounds. You can transcribe 23 additional sounds per writing system by adding diacritical marks. With a pair of short diagonal strokes ("), the unvoiced consonants k,s,t and h becomes voiced consonants g,z,d and b respectively. The consonant h changes to p with the addition of a small circle. Small や,ゆ, and よ for Hiragana and ヤ,ユ, and ヨ for Katakana follow after letters in the second column (i-vowel Hiragana and Katakana, except い) and are used to transcribe contracted sounds. The contracted sound represents s single syllable.

Hiragana with Diacritical Marks
Hiragana Contracted Sounds
Katakana with Diacritical Marks
Katakana with Contracted Sounds

The best way to memorize each character is by writing them and reading them afterwards. If you are certain that you already memorize Hiragana and Katakana you can test your self through this online flash cards.

Hiragana Flash Card

Katakana Flash Card

If you already mastered Hiragana and Katakana you can now proceed to our next lesson.