classroom

Kon'nichi wa! Welcome to my classroom. I am Heza-sen'sei, your teacher. I would like to give you a little bit of background information and my credentials before I begin. Firstly, I am NOT a certified Japanese language teacher, nor have I ever been. I am merely a student of Nihon'go, and am sharing my knowledge with anyone who wants to read and learn it. My lessons are a bit muddled, as I have had 2 different teachers so far, so each lesson is a combination of what I was taught. Hopefully you'll get something productive out of this... use it to further your knowledge, get better deals in Japanese restaurants (sometimes it DOES work!), impress your friends, learn the language, or do whatever it is you so wish to do. Wakarimashita?

Good. Now then, please take your seat. Say "hello" to at least two people sitting near you. Alright, class is in session. Please find a book on your desk called "Learn Japanese: New College Text Volume 1", by John Young and Kimiko Nakajima-Okano. Don't let the name scare you, because I have filtered the information in an easy-to-understand lesson plan. Let's begin.

The Japanese pronunciation is very sharp and direct, and does not tend to flow steadily. It takes a lot of practice to get it down, but once you have it, it just gets easier. There are no side rules to the pronunciation of words like there are in English (ie, short and long sounds of vowels). Here is a list of vowels and their phonetics:

A - "ah"
I - "ee"
U - "oo"
E - "eh"
O - "oh"

This is also the way they will always appear alphabetically, instead of the English system of "A, E, I, O, U". This will be extrememly important to remember when learning how to draw in Hiragana, a little later.
An interesting note to remember when learning how to spell in Japanese (Romaji - another of the writing systems, in which western letters are used, instead of eastern characters) is that generally, vowels are the only single-digit letters. There is an exception to this rule, however. Sometimes, a consonant can be repeated. When drawing the characters for words (in Hiragana, for example) this is drawn simply by subscripting the letter "tsu" before the consonant that is being repeated. Some words where the consonants are repeated are: "issho ni", "kissaten", and "chotto". Here's an EXAMPLE. The only two letters that do not get drawn by a subscript "tsu" when being drawn are the letters "n" and "m", which will be explained later. Some examples of other letters in the Japanese alphabet include: "Ka, Shi, Fu, Kyu, Mi, and Pa". Each one of those syllables is actually just ONE letter. Here is a display of the first and most basic Japanese alphabet, and remember, in Japan, everything is read from right to left, and from up to down!!

A helpful tool to remember the order of this alphabet is to memorize this anagram:

                                       A Ka Sa Ta Na, Ha Ma Ya Ra Wa N

Then write it across the top of your paper from right to left, and then write the vowels in descending order:

                                                        A   I   U   E   O

This will make what we call the "alphabet grid". Now I'm sure you've noticed a few random letters in there that don't exactly follow the grid-like pattern, such as "shi, chi, tsu, fu, (o), and n", as well as the absense of letters in the "Ya, Wa, N" columns, but don't worry, it's supposed to be that way. ^_^ The only thing that can really be explained is the letter (o), which is actually an entire word, all in itself, and is used grammatically. Remember, "o" and "(o)" are two separate letters, though they are pronounced the same. I will explain it later. The other absent letters were used once a long time ago, but are no longer used today.

Also, there is a little matter concerning the letter "u". This is a special letter, especially when it falls at the end of a word. Should a word end in "u" (those would be all the verbs), it is NOT PRONOUNCED. It is not incorrect to pronounce the "oo" sound, but native speakers will not, and the purpose of learning a language is to be able to speak it well. For example:

                       Tabemasu = (sounds like) Tabemas
                        Shimasu = (sounds like) Shimas

There are certain words where pronunciation of the "u" is unavoidable, such as:

                        Mizu = (sounds like) Mizu