Foolish Eirinn. You don't write Japanese, you DRAW Japanese

While the writing in paper part will be complicated for me because I suck that much at drawing (even more now that I only write on paper for university exams every 6 months), I'll keep those characters in a Word document, just like literally everything else.

This lesson reminded me of a few anime scenes were you actually can hear they say the last syllable of Konnichiwa as an "ah". Not sure if regional dialects play a part in how that last syllable is actually spelled and if it can even change the way you write draw the whole word, but anyway.

Since it's 2 AM in the morning, I won't rev up my speakers to death to hear Michael Allen's voice. I'll try to listen to it tomorrow if I'm not too busy, but like I said, pronunciation is the easiest part for me and thus I can skip it in favor of focusing in the characters.

Something tells me that actually learning to draw the characters will be a course in of itself because of learning all the individual strokes that go into each character.... For proper form, anyway.

In addition to lexilogos as Juliet has suggested, you could also write up an alt code sheet for the Hiragana character set. It would be a hard way around, but would also eliminate the dependency on Romaji and might help with memorization.

Alt codes allow for magic like this é♪╝┘☼

EDIT: Course, not coarse.

EDIT 2: Scratch that... I couldn't actually find and alt code tables for Hiragana.

I'll need to save this one. Man, alphabets are about where I get lost...

Yeeaa... I'm definitely going to have a lot more trouble with the actual characters than the pronunciations lol. I've seen enough Romaji in combination with hearing pronunciations a lot to mostly guestimate my way through it, but those characters are just too similar sometimes

It's been years since I actually wrote something down for studying, though admittedly I use an actual paper notebook for all the things most people use Word or Notepad programs for XD

But Palen is right about the volume. On my computer with maxed out settings and head-phones, I could barely hear anything lol. I mean it's all good, I'm just saying.

EDIT: I made a mistake in the video for this one. As I mentioned in a previous edit, は is indeed pronounced ha, not wa, unless it's a particle.
Also, Kana is phonetic. Ignore comments that I make like "most words are spelled phonetically".
_____________


As promised, lesson three is now live.
This lesson is about reading and writing in Hiragana. Might as well use these characters after bothering to learn them, right?


Now to get on with the lesson:

Konnichi wa
こ-ん-に-ち-は
ko-n-ni-chi-ha

Arigatou
あ-り-が-と-う
a-ri-ga-to-u

Sayounara
さ-よ-う-な-ら
sa-yo-u-na-ra

は-い
ha-i

Iie
い-い-え
i-i-e

That's it for now. Next we'll cover more Hiragana, then more spelling, and so on.

An interesting and fun practice I've found is listening to words in Japanese then trying to spell them in Hiragana, or at least guessing at what letters/characters you can. You can then turn to a translator to see if your spelling was accurate (google translate usually gets single word inputs correct). I've personally learned how to spell some things this way already, though I won't pass any of them on to you until I cover them and can verify them in my literature just in case Google translate is being stupid...again.

Additionally if you want to skip ahead, Lexilogos (check Juliet's post here) is very handy, and helps when you need to write in something besides Romaji.

Finally here are the links. Also tell me if the pacing of these lessons is too slow or fast.

The video

The Mp3


EX Palen : Should I tell the people that made my literature and my reading and writing book that it's actually a reading and drawing book then?

Also it should be louder this time...I hope.


m0ssb3rg935 : Perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I think you can just ignore proper stroke order for now. As long as you can read it and learn how to identify it, that should suffice until later lessons. Kind of like how your handwriting was practically illegible when you were learning the Alphabet, but eventually you learn to write the letters properly with some training. That's how I'm looking at it right now anyway.


User-kun : Nuuu hang on, user! You can make it through this!


Mynamescox44 : I rarely write anything by hand, which is probably why my handwriting looks so awful. Lol

As for volume, I tried to reposition the mic and still raised the volume to 200% again, so let me know if it's still too low.


xxAriaxx :
deggle :
SacredShadow :
Eniitan :
ZeroTails :
sevencube3 :
Jygin :
Frodlex :
Zlinqx :

If I'm the only one it's throwing off, then don't mind me lol, but the hyphens in between each character are weird to see. I had to scroll down (or up if you're not in the reply page) to double check that wasn't part of the actual characters XD

I was just telling Jygin the other night when practicing them in my notebook I feel like a 5 year old again learning letters one by one lol.

Anyway... Arigatou Mr. Roboto
(jk lol. But seriously, Thank You for the opportunity)

--Edit--
Oh yea... Forgot to mention the volume this time is SOO much better lol. I can actually hear it clearly ^^

Yup, the volume is so much better now. I can easily hear the video at half the volume I used the last time (and back then I could barely hear it).

I bookmarked Juliet's link to lexilogos to easily access a page where I can practice all characters and their use. Maybe we could try to do some group exercises for better practicing, even though I'm not someone who favors group activities this time it could be an interesting "adventure".

Eirinn : The volume is a whole lot better in this video. Thanks for the lessons!

こんばんは。
Alright so first of all there are some big changes being made to the way we handle the lessons. I'll explain those right away, but if you aren't interested in all of that, feel free to skip ahead to the start of the lesson (signified by large green font).

From now on the video and audio lessons will be much simpler, in that I will only say the characters, words, or phrases and (in the video) display the words on the screen. All of the important details will be mentioned only in the written form of the lesson.
The reason for this change is that the lessons keep getting longer, and in fact lesson four was initially over nine minutes long. This makes it less convenient for you as well as myself. Also this way if you download the audio and play it on repeat, you just hear the important stuff rather than my talking on what you've already learned from the written lesson.


Now on to the lesson.


Lesson #4

New phrases

NOTE: The new literature uses a different style of Romaji than the previous one. As such I may end up mistakenly mixing the two. I could use the new one exclusively, but I don't wish to confuse anyone by changing what certain syllables are signified by.
For example in the new form, ha is spelled wa, but I'll continue spelling it as ha in Romaji since that's how we spelled it before. Besides this, there is another character spelled as wa in Romaji, and this keeps any confusion down.

Now on to the new phrases.


Long time no see
ひさしぶりですね
Hisashiburi desu ne
The u in desu is, of course, devoiced.


How are you?
おげんきですか
Ogenki desu ka


I'm fine
げんきです
Genki desu


I'm fine
おかげさまで
Okagesama de

This is the polite form of "I'm fine".


Thank you
ありがとうございます
Arigatou gozamiasu

Both u's are devoiced now. They're multiplying. .__.

And this is the polite form of arigatou.


See you later
それではまた
Sorede ha mata

Remember the は (ha) in それではまた is pronounced "wa", not "ha".


I'm sorry
ごめんなさい
Gomennasai


Good morning
おはようございます
Ohayou gozamiasu

Yep, still two devoiced u's.

This is the polite form Good morning.


Good morning
おはよう
Ohayou

This is the informal form.


Good evening
こんばんは
Konbanha

I may have spelled this Konbanwa previously. If so, I apologize for the confusion. It is pronounced that way, but this word uses は (ha), not わ (wa).


Good night
おやすみなさい
Oyasuminasai

This is the polite form, I believe.


Good night
おやすみ
Oyasumi

Informal form.


How do you do?
はじめまして
Hajimemashi te
NOTE: there shouldn't be a space between Hajimemashi and te, but I had to put it there, otherwise Vizzed would censor the word.

Also the し in はじめまして sounds like "shh" rather than "shi". The i is still there, but it's devoiced, just like the u in desu.
This devoicing may vary by region or due to other factors.


Nice to meet you
どうぞよろしく
Douzo yoroshiku

A u that isn't silent! :3

And again, the "i" in the し is devoiced.


What's your name?
おなまえは
Onamae ha

And of course は is pronounced "wa".


To be...
~です
~desu


I am...
わたしはです
Watashi ha ~ desu

This is an example of "wa" and "ha" being in the same phrase. However, both are pronounced "wa" in this phrase, as ha is acting as a particle. More on that later.



Now for the promised explanation of formal, informal, and neutral.
Many words have different forms, which one you should use depends on who you're speaking to.

So far I have encountered three forms:
•Informal — Reserved for friends, subordinates, and those who are younger than oneself. Use in informal settings.

•Neutral — Safe with most people that you know, in most situations.

•Polite — Used for people you do not know well, superiors, your elders, and in formal settings.



Now for some important notes:
The literature and other resources I ordered came in about two weeks ago, but I'm just now really getting into it. The material in these is far superior to the resources I was using before, and the teaching format is much different as well. As a result of us switching to these materials we will be changing lesson plans, so any plans I had mentioned prior to this lesson should be considered scrapped.

Additionally, these lessons are much bigger than the previous material's lessons, so we'll probably be doing no more than one lesson a week. However this will be balanced by the fact that we will be covering much more ground in each lesson, including learning sentence structure, reading and writing, stroke order of Kana and eventually Kanji, and more. Plus more words per lesson.

Now for our first official dabble into the written language.



Explaining Kana and Kanji
So far we've discussed Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji, but I don't think we've covered what the differences are yet. Time to get that done.

•Hiragana.
Hiragana is one of the two Japanese syllabaries, the other is Katakana. Collectively they are simply called Kana. Each one is comprised of forty six characters, and each character represents a vowel or consonant-vowel combination, except for ん "n". However ん is considered a consonant sound in Japanese. This is why the Japanese characters are known as syllabaries instead of alphabets.

Hiragana is used to spell words that are of a Japanese origin.


•Katakana.
Katakana is used to spell foreign loan words, such as Non-Japanese names, onomatopoeias (words that imitate the sound they make, such as "hiss" or "woof"), and it is sometimes used for adding an emphasis on a word. Kind of like how we use CAPITAL LETTERS in English in informal writings, or italics, etc. to emphasize a particular word.


•Kanji.
Kanji is logographic, or simply, it uses symbols to depict words. As such, a single Kanji can represent an entire word, though often Kanji are combined with other Kanji, or even combined with Kana to form a different word.
Kanji was originally borrowed from Chinese but was adopted to fit the Japanese language (the pronunciation was changed to reflect the Japanese syllabaries in sound).

Kanji is used for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. There are 1,945 commonly used Kanji (Jouyou Kanji). Most Japanese printed literature (written for adults) "assumes a working knowledge of these 1,945 Kanji". There are many Kanji that are less frequently used, and the total when combined is greater than 2,300.

In some publications something called Furigana is used. Furigana is small Kana that is printed above Kanji to help the reader understand what is being said if they do not understand the Kanji. Literally the Furigana spells the word that the Kanji depicts in Kana.

Finally, when a name is written in Kanji, it is often accompanied by Furigana to aid in pronunciation due to how names can be pronounced differently.


Learning Hiragana
This section will be following along with the literature, which uses the same order you would find in a dictionary. As such there will be some characters covered that we have already covered.

We begin with あぎょぅ (agyou), or the A-line.

あ = a. As in ありがとうございます (arigatou gozamiasu)

い = i. As in いいえ (no)

う = u. As in うえ (un - informal "yes")

え = e. As in ええ (ee. - Also an informal "yes")

お = o. As in おはよございます (ohayou gozamiasu)

Next we'll cover かぎょぅ (kagyou), or the Ka-line.

か = ka. As in かわいい (Kawaii - cute)

き = ki. As in きれい (kirei - Beautiful, Pretty, Clean)

く = ku. As in くれる (kureru - to give)

け = ke. As in けど (kedo - but)

こ = ko. As in こんにちは (konnichiha)




And to close this out, I need to correct two errors I made previously: first, as it's been mentioned already, Konnichiha does not simply mean hello. It's an afternoon greeting specifically. You would not say Konnichiha in the morning or evening.
And it is pronounced Ko-n-ni-chi-ha. Previously I omitted the "n" between Ko and Ni. My apologies for these errors, but as I said, we're learning together so I may make errors from time to time. If I do I will be sure to let you know as soon as I realize it.


Oh also bonus points to anyone who can tell me what the opening word in this post was in either Romaji or by translating it into English. No points if you used a translator or looked the word up in a previous lesson.

And if you could, try sending me a chat message, post, or something else with at least one word written in Hiragana (again, you can use Lexilogos for this).
NOTE: Hiragana does not work in private messages.

The volume seems to have dropped again. Sorry. I'll try to get that fixed again next time.
Because videos

Ye olde Mp3
Important note: I mispronounced one of the words at one point. The video points this out, but the audio doesn't. When you come to the word you'll know it because I say it twice and it sounds different the second time. The first one was the right way of saying it.


And thanks to Linkums for his help on an issue I faced while making this.



EX Palen : Good idea. I'm making an exercise for everyone that I'll probably post in lesson five.

As for a few posts back when you said you'd heard someone that sounded like they were saying こんにちは as "こんにちあ" I heard something very similar while playing Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, but I can't determine what word it is (comparing it with the English subtitles), or exactly how it's spelled since it's said randomly and I tend to miss it. I'll let you know when I figure that out.


Mynamescox44 : Ah, sorry about that. I was afraid I'd went overboard with the video lesson in having Romaji, Hiragana, and a Hiragana breakdown with dashes to show the different syllables and how they were pronounced individually. I guess I should either do the same here, or just add spaces and omit the dashes altogether.


m0ssb3rg935 :
A user of this :
xxAriaxx :
deggle :
SacredShadow :
Eniitan :
ZeroTails :
sevencube3 :
Jygin :
Frodlex :
Zlinqx :

Okay, lessons are getting interesting. Since it's usual to use the "incorrect" words and phrases we tend to hear in anime and we want to talk properly in here, I have to ask about the differences I've noted between the listed phrases and the anime/videogames.

In the first phrase, I've never heard the starter "hi". It may be that it's an aspirated h immediately followed by an s and thus I missed it (h has no pronunciation in Spanish, beat that).

The second and third phrases, which are related, I never heard the n before the k, and would bet it's more like an aspirated h rather than a g. However, most times those phrases are used tend to be low-volume scenes for being plain dialogue, so it's perfectly easy I misheard them.

Jumping down to the phrase "Hajimemashi te", this is normally translated into a greeting for the first time you're introduced to someone. After all, the syllables "hajime" often reference to start or commence, giving it more sense to translate into "First time we meet!" rather than "How do you do?".

"Douzo" is more like pronounced with two o, instead of a u. Either that or they emphasize the first o, but still worth noting.

I'll get beyond that part tomorrow. The days where I forced myself to study at nearly 2:30 AM are long gone, and I'm not going to start again near Christmas

Well, I'd go for the bonus points by answering what word that is at the beginning, but it's the same one you sent me a couple days ago, so I'll give someone else a chance to figure it out lol

To further elaborate on the silent "U" in these words, think of Sasuke's name from Naruto. Even though there's a U in the middle of the name, it's still pronounced like "Sahs-kay"  I hope that makes sense or helps if anyone was a little confused by it.

Looks like I'm going to be pretty busy for awhile. This will be at least a good hour or two of writing to get all of these characters down, and remembering which ones are what

Also, I hope it's not a bother to you or anyone else using these lessons, but Thank You so much for removing the hyphens! It's like 10x easier for me to read this without them ^^

And one last question (which if this is covered in the next lesson, don't worry about it). What is the "Ka-line" for? I noticed it was only used for certain words that start with the letter K, but then words like Konbanha or Konnichiha don't use it?
I just don't get why it's there or what it's meant to signify in the word / it's pronunciation.

ありがとうございます

(Oh, and when will we learn how to say "Love me, Senpai!!" XD)

EX Palen : Wait, h isn't pronounced in Spanish at all? o__O Wow. As for the h in ひさしぶりですね, I can't say for sure. If I were to venture a guess though, I'd say it's probably either informal or slang. Kind of pike saying "Hiya" instead of "Hi", or "'sup?" instead of "What's up?" (Does anyone even say 'sup anymore?). In the audio examples on the CDs I got with the other resources the h is pronounced very distinctly. If I find out what's up with the differences, I'll let you know.

The n in numbers two and three is written so I'm assuming it's pronounced. I've seen two words that they (the voices in the audio examples) put an n sound where it shouldn't be and isn't written, but this one being written makes me think that it's supposed to be. As for the words that are mispronounced in the discs, they are おかげさまで and ありがとうございます. The reasoning provided for ありがとうございます being pronounced with an n at the end of ありがとう is that apparently it's a now outdated way of saying it. Or so I'm told anyway. That may also be the case with おかげさまで. I asked an instructor about this and he said it may be outdated, or it may be a different dialect since certain areas (he listed one in particular that I can't recall by name) have different ways of pronouncing words. I suppose any country does though, I know the US certainly does.

はじめまして was indeed presented as part of a way to introduce yourself. The example was something like はじめまして。おなまえは。(How do you do. What's your name?) but it wasn't specifically stated that はじめまして was only for a first time meeting.
Even so, something I failed to note is that these translations are giving us the English equivalent of the Japanese words and phrases, and not the literal ones. For example おげんきですか (how are you?) literally means "Are you well?", but since that isn't how it would be said in English, we are given a rough translation, or literally, the closest appropriate expression in English. A other example is that the Japanese form of "what's up" literally means "how is your condition".
So はじめまして may (and likely does indeed) translate more accurately as "first time we meet", but that wouldn't be proper grammar in English. The closest term we have for that is "How do you do?" and that's probably why they translated it as such. Kind of like honorifics and titles like Senpai — there is literally no proper translation in English and as such they are often omitted entirely (though San is sometimes translated Mr. which isn't entirely accurate).

Douzo is actually written Doozo in my new literature, but like I said, my previous material used u to signify the Hiragana character う, so for consistency sake I kept using the u instead of oo. Don't want to confuse anyone. There are different styles of Romaji, and I assume that's what causes the differences between the two sources on that and the "wa" and "ha" part. Also when I see oo I personally read it as ooh instead of oh, though oo still makes sense. It just plays with my head. Lol




Mynamescox44 : Surprisingly someone already answered it via chat message. I didn't expect anyone to be able to read it yet. Originally it was a different word and I changed it at the last minute for reasons that you could guess if you look closely at my post.


I never knew that. I always pronounced the u in Sasuke. Of course I also pronounced the ke as key instead of Kay. Once you said the u was silent in it my mind kicked into Romaji mode and figured out that it would be sahs-kay instead of sahs-key though. Thanks. It seems the u in す is often silent. Not too odd for me though since English characters often change pronunciation depending on how they're used. It makes this easier for me to find ways to compare it to English. Seems less daunting when I realize I've mastered similar things in another language, and that without a ton of effort.


Heh I was planning on dropping a sort of "lesson 4-2" midweek as well. Think we should hold off until next week instead? It would mostly be various exercises of what we covered in 4. Also if you guys feel like that is too much Hiragana to drop on you at once, I can cut back to one line a week instead of two. In fact I added the Ka-line myself as it was in the reading and writing book instead of the main lesson book which at this point has only covered the A-line. The reading and writing book is a stand alone supplement, so we can progress through it as desired.


No problem! The hyphens were actually left out because I wasn't breaking down the phonetics as much this time as last. I probably won't again except in the video/audio, and the dreaded hyphens shall never return. :3 lol


The Ka-line is just one of the lines on the ひらがなのごゆうおんひょぅ (the name of the Hiragana chart). Just like the A-line shows all of the vowels, the Ka-line shows all of the syllables that start with a k sound. We haven't used many characters from the Ka-line yet, but we will eventually, so this is just for future reference. Basically to enable us to move on to reading Hiragana words more quickly and to hopefully enable a smoother transition from a Hiragana-Romaji mix to all Hiragana. Kind of like how you learned the alphabet before learning to spell many words. So far I think we've used Ka, Ko, and Ku.

If your question was more along the lines of "What is the function of the Ka-line" then it's literally just more characters in the Hiragana syllabary that we haven't utilized yet. They'll appear shortly.

It's worth noting that the character Ka is used to signify a question, such as in おげんきですか (are you well?). I believe it's a particle, but I don't know enough about particles to say yet.


Pronunciation is as follows (when said alone):
Ka = Kah (much like あ, only with a k at the start. In fact that pattern holds true in most of the syllables on each line)

Ku = koo

Ke = Kay

Ko = Koh or Kō

Also I forgot to list Ki. I'll edit that into the Ka-line later.

Ki = Key.


うえ。


And we'll cover that as soon as all of you promise to never say it to me. xD

Eirinn : Uh....oniichan? Could you like help me with something please? btw I love your latest posts makes me so eager to learn! Anyways about the help....you see I downloaded ffx, x-2 remaster on steam not too long ago. I was so happy until uh....I saw the words....I didn't go into settings at first all of the words were in...Japanese so I got overwhelmed....can I learn more of the Japanese words not in English, but as you are doing it now to learn a little more faster please? So then in time I would be able to play just using Japanese and not English. @.@

Eirinn : Yup, h isn't pronounced, so imagine the many writing errors we make in our childhood. As an added bonus, b and v are pronounced the same, so which one to write is close to random. And well, better not talk about written Catalan, it's like hell on earth.

As for はじめまして, I personally would put it as "Pleased to meet you", more like a toned down or not so formal way compared to どうぞよろしく. Again, I'm just talking about my experience in the anime, where どうぞよろしく was used between adults and はじめましてbetween classmates or youngsters, so there goes the formality thing.

Besides, "first time we meet" is correct in Spanish (or should, I'm a complete mess right now between three languages) so there goes why I said that. I guess I can make my own translations of these phrases thanks to my mother language having different grammar

Lesson 4-II
おやすみなさい 。

Time for some exercises of what we learned in lesson 4. Think of lesson 4 as your studying, and 4-II as the quiz. Please do not peek at the answers in lesson 4.

Let's get on into this now.


Phrase test
Match the Japanese phrase to it's English equivalent.
NOTE: One is left untranslated intentionally.

Japanese
1. ひさしぶりですね 
2. おかげさまで 
3. おげんきですか 
4. ありがとうございます
5. おやすみなさい
6. おはよう
7. おはようございます
8. こんばんは 
9. げんきです
10. ごめんなさい
11. はじめまして
12. それではまた 
13. どうぞよろしく 
14. わたしは~です 
15. ~です
16. おなまえは 

English
a. Good morning (informal)
b. Long time no see
c. How are you (literally, "are you well")
d. I'm fine (polite)
e. Thank you (polite)
f. Good morning (polite)
g. I'm fine (literally "well")
h. Good evening
i. See you later
j. I'm sorry
k. How do you do
l. Nice to meet you
m. What's your name
n. I am...
o. To be...


Pronunciation test
Transcribe the following into either Romaji or phonetics. This will aid you in both pronouncing the words, and in learning the characters.


1. おなまえは 
2. おはよう
3. おげんきですか 
4. ありがとうございます
5. ごめんなさい
6. おかげさまで 
7. それではまた 
8.  ~です
9. げんきです
10. おやすみなさい
11. はじめまして
12. おはようございます
13. どうぞよろしく 
14. わたしは~です 
15. こんばんは
16. ひさしぶりですね 

Send test answers to me, or grade them yourselves using lesson 4 as an answer key.




Eniitan : Depending on what you mean. If you mean you want to keep focusing on the actual Japanese writing instead of the Romaji we started with, then yes, we're definitely going to keep on doing that.

If you're asking for more words per lesson or to move more quickly then I can share more with you in chat, but since these lessons are getting so big with the new material I can't add too much more to the lesson itself. I do know a few more things that the lessons won't cover for a while though, so some private exchanges would be doable.


EX Palen : Actually after thinking about it for a bit, I realized that "How do you do?" is a term that I've only heard used in a first time greeting as well, even though the wording might not suggest that. It would seem awkward to say it to someone you already knew. So I guess it's a closer translation than I thought.



m0ssb3rg935 :
A user of this :
xxAriaxx :
deggle :
SacredShadow :
ZeroTails :
sevencube3 :
Jygin :
Frodlex :
Zlinqx :
Mynamescox44 :

EDIT: Whoopsie. Double post.

Good freaking gosh...I can NOT grasp any of this stuff. Although I have been cramming this lately. I have hardly had time for myself, let alone study this. It all got so overwhelming really fast. I'll send all this stuff back to you ASAP though. I need a lot more review with all this. lol

I just noticed that the standard set of Hiragana is missing a lot of consonant sounds like B, D, G and J, with those sounds created by modifying base characters with something similar to what we use in place of quotation marks ("). If I hadn't noticed that, I probably would've confused several characters for different sounds. Is that the only modifier or are there more?

EDIT: Double post, btw.

だいごか Dai Goka

Welcome to lesson number five, and whatever you do, don't plug that Hiragana up there into Google Translate.


This time we're going to back up a bit and change gears. I've been hearing a lot that the most recent lessons were a little too difficult, and since that seems to be the general consensus (I haven't spoken with all of you about it, but all that I have are in agreement), I decided to look at it from your point of view.

The biggest hurdle here is that I went into this assuming you had committed to memory all of the characters you've seen in a word so far, but never actually formally covered them, and as such there has been no reason for you to think to learn them yet. In fact I've only covered two of the character lines in these lessons, so most of the Hiragana you see in these probably looks like gibberish to you. I had already learned most of the Hiragana syllabary before getting into these more intense lessons, and as such I had no trouble understanding them. I didn't stop to think of the advantage that gave me that you don't have. I apologize for the oversight.


So for now we're just going to learn the ごじゅうおん (literally "Fifty sounds"). Also note that despite it being known as ごじゅうおん there are indeed — as I stated in lesson 4 — only forty six syllables. Four have become obsolete over the years, but the name ごじゅうおん stuck.

Last lesson we covered the あぎょぅ agyou (A-line) and the かぎょぅkagyou (Ka-line), so we'll just gloss over those this time.
Finally, please note that the words given here as examples are not listed as an example of pronunciation of either the words or the characters. The pronunciation is given separately from the word.


Hiragana Syllabary Part 1

あぎょぅ agyou (A-line)
These are the vowels.

あ = a (â) — ありがとうございます (arigatou gozamiasu - polite form of Thank you)

い = i (ē) — いいえ (iie - no)

う = u (ū) — うえ (un - an informal form of yes)

え = e (ê) — ええ (ee - Also an informal yes)

お = o (ō) — おはようございます (ohayou gozamiasu - Polite good morning)


かぎょぅ kagyou (Ka-line)
Note: as is the case with most of the syllabary, the かぎょぅ kagyou sounds the same as the あぎょぅ agyou with it's respective consonant (K in this case) placed before it. So "a" becomes "ka", "o" becomes "ko", and so on.

か = ka (kâ) — かわいい (kawaii - cute)

き = ki (kē) — きれい (kirei - beautiful, pretty, clean)

く = k (kū) — ください (kudasai - please. Specifically as in please give, or please do)

け = ke (kê) — けど (kedo - but)

こ = ko (kō) — こんばんは (konbanha - good evening)


さぎょぅ sagyou (Sa-line)
Note: in this line there are some irregularities in the rule established with the かぎょぅ kagyou, in that we have shi instead of si. Otherwise the rule applies.

さ = sa (sâ) — さん (san - (roughly) mr. ms.)

し = shi (shē) — しばらく (shibaraku - for a while)

す = su (sū) — すごい (sugoi - amazing)

せ = se (sê) — せんせい (sensei - teacher)

そ = so (sō) — それではまた (sorede ha mata - see you later)


たぎょぅ tagyou (Ta-line)
Note: The たぎょぅ tagyou is one of the most irregular lines. It shows the most disregard for the rule we established with the かぎょぅ kagyou that you'll see, in that what would have been ti is instead chi, and what would seem should be tu is tsu. Aside from these two irregularities, the general rule is followed.

た = ta (tâ) — たこ (tako - octopus)

ち = chi (chē) — ちゃんと (chianto - informal for properly, exactly, accurately)

つ = tsu (t-sū) — つまらない (tsumaranai - boring)

て = te (tê) — てがみ (tegami - letter)

と = to (tō) — とてま (totemo - very, very much)


That's it for the Hiragana syllabary for now. This time we covered twenty characters simply because the first ten had already been covered in the previous lesson, so presumably you've already studied them. From here on out we'll be covering ten in each lesson, since that was the almost unanimous vote I received from everyone. As such it should take us about three more weeks to finish the Hiragana syllabary, and from there we'll get back into learning new words and phrases.

However there were at least two people that requested to learn between fifteen and twenty a week. To those who asked for more than ten: PM me if you'd like to have additional lines sent to you. I have no qualms with doing so.


Hiragana mnemonics:
Below I'll provide ways to help you remember the various characters covered in this lesson. The sources I learned the syllabary from used similar methods and I personally found it very effective. Best of all, after using the various associations to learn what each character looked like, I eventually found myself separating the example from the character, so that, for example, when trying to identify あ, I no longer looked for the one that looked like an apple, instead I simply began associating the character directly with the sound. This should happen without you even trying, so I see no drawbacks in using the mnemonics.

Now to start.

あ — Some say it looks like an apple. Another way of seeing it is as an o with a t shoved through it. Or perhaps as the sword in the stone.

い — It looks like LI. So い is Li.

う — It's a sideways u under a line or bar. U trying to limbo, う?

え — a lower case h under a line. Or a 7 with a tail and a line over it.

お — a cursive j with a line off to the side. Or the cousin of あ (a).

か — another h, this time with a bowed knee — kân you see it (lame, I know)? Or a person in a chair with a line behind it.

き — ki (kē) looks a bit like a key. Or a musical note with two lines through it.

く — Ku looks like a bird's open beak. A Ku-ku (cuckoo) bird maybe (the lame is real)? Or maybe it's a K without a back.

け — ke is a broken K with, o-ke? Or it could be a broken capital H.

こ — Ko is a sideways J under a blanket. Or remember "The two lines are Ko-existing" (Not my mnemonic there).

さ — Sa is a man with a HUGE foot. Or it may be the face of a serious looking man while he's talking.

し — Shi (shē) likes to go fishing with her friends - shi even brings her own special fishhook, see? し

す — Su looks like a dancing J. Or maybe Su is just Sue carrying a ball with her. It's a T with a loop under the top.

せ — Se is an old man talking. Or it's LJ's initials crossed out.

そ — So is dancing - sō what? Or it's 7 over C (maybe just got even more confusing).

た — Ta is Ko with a lower case t behind it - put them together and you get tako (octopus).

ち — Chi is a 5.

つ — Tsu is just U after he finishes his limbo. Tsu is U without the line above.

て — Te is a capital T, and it sounds kind of like one too.

と — To is a toe with the toenail pulled back (ouch).

Hopefully this helps, or at least makes you laugh...or roll your eyes and smile.


Links:

みる
Gah. After finishing the video and editing it, I replayed it and found that the volume is low again. -__- I promise I'll find a way to get volume AND quality eventually. Until then try not to blow your speakers out. lol


And on a final note: if you have any words that you would like to know now, please feel free to ask and I will gladly cover them, provided I can find them in my book's glossary.



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m0ssb3rg935 : No, there's also one that looks like the sign for Fahrenheit — °. For example: ひ (hi) becomes ぴ (pi). However, I don't know yet what those modifiers are called or how they work.
Also you might consider the smaller versions of certain characters as variations of them. Those are glides. I'll cover them later.


A user of this : Yeah sorry about that. I kinda jumped the gun on that lesson. That should be remedied over the next few weeks.




Mynamescox44 :
EX Palen :
xxAriaxx :
deggle :
SacredShadow :
ZeroTails :
sevencube3 :
Jygin :
Frodlex :
Zlinqx :
Eniitan :

Looks like I did the right thing betting for 10 characters each lesson. I've been quite busy with the start of the year for various reasons, the main one being that I have exams in two weeks and I already have enough to study, so I won't ask for more characters in advance since I'll be (technically) back in full form by the time we've covered the whole syllabary.

While this lesson isn't focused in learning new words and its pronunciation, and while I'm aware that this is just one of the varied languages in Japanese, I'd like to ask about the finishing i in kirei and sensei. So far, I've heard them omitted, though I know they're still written by the way of pronouncing sensei out of Japan. Are they omitted in Hiragana?

On a side note, I've always assumed that うえ was more an onomatopoeia for the affirmative gesture of nodding. After all, it's not strange to use it over here, even in formal talks (though always used by the one with superior "hierarchy").