Nihongo ~ Japanese Class

Bre and I have been attending a Japanese class for the past month and a half.  It is a volunteer taught class, so the cost is very low.  We have succeeded in learning the basics of Katakana and Hiragana, two of the four commonly used Japanese Alphabets.  Of the other alphabets Romanji is basically roman characters in English words which we already knew, and the other is Kanji.  Kanji are Chinese characters.  We have learned only a handful of Kanji so far.  The Kanji are the most difficult to master.

Above is a photo of our dining room table covered in textbooks, reference books, notebooks, and practice books.  On a side note, I have decided to try writing about the photo directly above the text used to describe it.  This should reduce confusion about what I am referring to.  If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog please let me know.  I appreciate your comments.

In some ways Japanese is quite easy to learn.  There are fewer sounds in Japanese than English and virtually all the Japanese Phonemes are also English Phonemes.   In other ways Japanese can be quite challenging to learn.  The photo above is of a worksheet describing how to count.  There are several words for each number and the word that you use for the number depends on what you are counting.  For example, if you are counting 4 Yen (en), then 4 is pronounced as yon as in yon en.  If you are counting 4 months (ga-tsu), then the 4 is pronounced shi (like the word "she"), as in shi ga-tsu = four months.  With me so far?

Now we get to the next level of complexity.  The word for the item you are counting changes in some cases depending on the number your are counting.  For example 400 is pronounced four hundred in English.  It makes sense that it is basically the same in Japanese.  Four is yon in when counting in hundred and hundred is pronounced hya-ku, meaning 400 is yon hya-ku.  However, if you are counting 300, the word for hundred becomes bya-ku.  So this means 300 is san (three) bya-ku (hundred).

And at the most confusing level of complexity sometimes both the word for the number and the word for the item you are counting change.  An example of this is 600.  6 is normally roku, but if you are counting in hundreds it becomes ro (with a doubling the sound of the following consonant.)  The 100 that was hya-ku becomes pya-ku when counting 600.  Therefore 600 is pronounced rop-pya-ku.

If you can read Hiragana just look at the photo above to see how this system works.

Here is one of our textbooks and the reference book that explains in English what the Japanese textbook is describing.

Our Sensei gave us each one of these practice books to improve our Hiragana.

Does this remind you of elementary school?  I felt like I was back practicing my letters.

Our Tuttle Pocket Japanese Dictionary has been invaluable.  It helps with translation when we can't find the meaning of the word anywhere else.

That's all for now,

Kyle (and Bre)