EditReading Japanese
A lot of people may think that Japanese is really hard to learn because of the writing system, but the writing is not as complicated as you might think at first. Japanese words can be expressed in three ways: You could use Romaji (romanized japanese), which is japanese written with the latin alphabet, it can be written in one of the two native Japanese phonetic syllabaries (
kana), or in Chinese ideographs (
kanji). かな (
kana) represent all sounds in the Japanese language. 漢字 (かんじ
kanji) represent concepts or ideas.
EditRomaji
Romaji (ローマ字) is a method of representing sounds in Japanese by using the Latin Alphabet. There are many different ways to romanize Japanese, the most popular is the Hepburn system of romanization, and it is the one used in this book. Romaji is useful for western learners of Japanese, as it can be used to learn vocabulary until the kana are memorized and it is usefurutch, thereby hindering progress. Romaji is also used to input Japanese text online and in word proccessors. In Japan romaji is used in advertising and television.
The Japanese word for "child" would be written as "kodomo" using romaji.
Editかな
かな (Kana) are easy to read and pronounce because they directly map to the sounds of Japanese.
There are two ways of writing the かな:
- ひらがな (hiragana)
- かたかな (katakana)
ひらがな (hiragana) is mostly used for native Japanese words and writing. かたかな (katakana) is mostly used to write the loan words from other languages and to give emphasis. Learning two ways to write the same sounds is not that strange - In the latin alphabet, there are also uppercase and lowercase letters, in addition to block and cursive writing, with sometimes vastly different pronunciations of the same character.
Edit漢字
漢字 (kanji) are a different matter. Each ideograph represents a concept rather than a sound, and can be pronounced in different ways depending on its context. The different pronunciations of a particular 漢字 are called "readings". It may seem daunting at first, but with practice, knowing when to use which pronunciation will eventually become second nature.
A 漢字 usually has two types of readings:
- 音読み (おんよみ on'yomi)
- 訓読み (くんよみ kun'yomi)
音読み readings are approximations of the Chinese pronunciations of that particular 漢字. 訓読み readings are the native Japanese sound(s) associated with that 漢字.
Edit How to proceed
It seems like a lot to learn, but all you really need to know at first is the ひらがな. With it, you can write every word in the Japanese language, and be understood by any Japanese reader. We will provide the resources you need to learn to read ひらがな, as well as how to pronounce the sounds. As you become comfortable with them, you can proceed with the lessons.
If you are comfortable with the ひらがな, you can also spend time to learn the かたかな. You will then be able to read all the foreign loanwords the Japanese use (and they use a lot -- especially words borrowed from English). Words written in かたかな are often words you already know, however almost always they are modified to fit the kana syllabary beyond easy recognition! Words include, in romaji, 'kisu' for 'kiss', 'teburu' for 'table' and 'orenji' for 'orange'.
, although difficult to learn, is imperative to learn for daily life. Although there are over 50,000 漢字, the Japanese government has approved 1,945 so-called "daily use" 漢字, known as 常用漢字 (じょうようかんじ
jouyou kanji) for publications. Once you master these, you will be able to read at a high school graduate level, and should be able to tackle newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals with ease. Note, however, that the average Japanese knows closer to 3000 characters.
There are tests to determine your Japanese abilities. The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) is given once a year in major cities around the globe. There are four levels. Four is the easiest, and one is the most advanced. When you pass level two or one, you will be able to enter a Japanese university without much trouble. We'll enrich our vocabulary lists and lessons with the required material for the JLPT, so if you ever decide to take the test, you will already be familiar with much of the vocabulary!
Edit Tools and utilities
I would like to help you, by giving you some links, to read much easier japanese.
First of all, to change the Kanji in Furigana.
http://www.hiragana.jp/
Here you can also put the link of italki.com and then all japanese text will get furigana above the kanji.
For the original sites and text, here I give you a tool, for listening japanese. But this tool can also read text in chinese, english, german, french and others.
http://free-translator.imtranslator.net/speech.asp
Now you need a database to translate english to japanese and japanese to english.
There are a lot other good tools on this site.
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C
And you need a database with many sentences.
http://jp.wordmind.com/ (without furigana)
http://trans.hiragana.jp/ruby/http://jp.wordmind.com/ (with furigana).
For those students, who want to learn japanese without Kanji, here an other link.
You can transform websites and also single kanji and phrases into hiragana, or katakana.
http://nihongo.j-talk.com/parser/
For learning
Japanese | Category
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Second language
English | Created
Apr 22, 2008 17:16 | Views
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