Subject: Japanese lesson 1: Learning Hirgana Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:58 pm
Before learning to speak Japanese you might want to first learn their alphabet. Japanese use symbols. There are three different forms Hiragana, katakana, an kanji.
Hiragana are used for words for which there are no kanji, including particles such as kara から "from", and suffixes such as ~san さん "Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms." Hiragana are also used in words for which the kanji form is not known to the writer or readers, or is too formal for the writing purpose.
Katakana are most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages. For example, "television" is written terebi (テレビ). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and personal names. For example, America is written アメリカ Amerika (America also has its own kanji (ateji) Amerika (亜米利加)
Kanji are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana, katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet (also known as Rōmaji).
Here are multiple sites and videos that show you the hiragana alphabet, how each syllable sound, and how to write them.
The hiragana alphabet begins first from right to left, top to bottom.
*http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/language/hiragana/index.html ~~This site gives you the alphabet and if you click on each letter a sound files opens. The top chart is the base alphabet while the other two uses the same hiragana symbol with an extra symbol changing the sound of it.
*http://www.easyjapanese.org/write_hiragana.html ~~This site shows you the stroke order of how each hiragana is written. Yes, Stroke order does matter!
The two video below goes through the hirgana alphabet.
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Hints of studying -Write a single hiragana letter, using the correct stroke order over and over. As you're writing each hirgana say the sound of the letter either in your head or outloud. Example: あ a あ a あ a あ
Tear-Otoku Siren/Incubus Lover
Subject: Re: Japanese lesson 1: Learning Hirgana Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:53 am