The First Steps to Learning Japanese! - Lesson 1 - Kana!

So, sometimes the first steps in things are the hardest, but personally, my experience with Japanese says that's not true :p

I has been a long time since I first started learning Japanese, and I have had a lot of breaks and off-time in between, which I now sincerely regret but, that's all in the past, now I'm determined to never give up! And here's the first of my mini lessons to keep myself motivated!

Of course, the most basic step in learning a foreign language is getting to know the alphabet they write in. Japanese actually has three alphabets (Hirigana, Katakana and Kanji!), and this can seem really intimidating at first to beginners but never fear! Two of them are actually phonetic which makes them easy once you've learnt the characters, and they are Hiragana ひらがな and Katakana カタカナ! They basically consist of all the same sounds, 48 different ones in total, although a couple aren't used often in morden Japanese any more.

The sounds of the alphabets are actually quite simple, once you get around the pronounciation differences of the letters!

There are 5 main vowel sounds, which are A, I, U, E and O.

'A' is pronounced as in 'hat'

'I' is pronounced as in 'ski'

'U' is pronounced as in 'moo'

'E' is pronounced as in 'bet'

and 'O' is pronounced as in 'go'

There is also the sound 'N', which is hardest to describe but it's a one off character that's like a 'nnhhh' such as the beginning of 'never'.

And after those first 5 sounds, all the other characters just have a different consonant on the front, for example, the hiragana and katakana alphabets, along side their romaji (Romaji is the Japanese word for the Western or Roman alphabet, so simply, Japanese spelled out in English!

-->

あ	い	う	え	お		ア	イ	ウ	エ	オ
A	I	U	E	O		A	I	U	E	O
か	き	く	け	こ		カ	キ	ク	ケ	コ
KA	KI	KU	KE	KO		KA	KI	KU	KE	KO
さ	し	す	せ	そ		サ	シ	ス	セ	ソ
SA	SHI	SU	SE	SO		SA	SHI	SU	SE	SO
た	ち	つ	て	と		タ	チ	ツ	テ	ト
TA	CHI	TSU	TE	TO		TA	CHI	TSU	TE	TO
な	に	ぬ	ね	の		ナ	ニ	ヌ	ネ	ノ
NA	NI	NU	NE	NO		NA	NI	NU	NE	NO
は	ひ	ふ	へ	ほ		ハ	ヒ	フ	ヘ	ホ
HA	HI	FU	HE	HO		HA	HI	FU	HE	HO
ま	み	む	め	も		マ	ミ	ム	メ	モ
MA	MI	MU	ME	MO		MA	MI	MU	ME	MO
や		ゆ		よ		ヤ		ユ		ヨ
YA		YU		YO		YA		YU		YO
ら	り	る	れ	ろ		ラ	リ	ル	レ	ロ
RA	RI	RU	RE	RO		RA	RI	RU	RE	RO
わ				を		ワ				ヲ
WA				WO		WA				WO
ん						ン
N						N

As you may have noticed, there are a few minor differences in pronunciation with a couple of characters. Shi, Chi, Tsu and Fu don't fit in the pattern, but they do lead to easier pronunciation of some words this way!

It's also important to point out that the RA line (RA, RI, RU, RE, RO) aren't exactly pronounced as RAAAAHHH, but the R is more subtle and rolled, halfway between an R and an L. Maybe if people like my lessons, I might make a video about pronunciation!

In my opinion, it makes the most sense to start by learning hiragana. Then, once you've got the sounds down, katakana seems so much simpler, as it can be tricky trying to do both at the same time!

Hiragana is generally used for most Japanese words, spelled out phonetically of course. It can be used for entire words and sentences, or intertwined with Kanji, the third alphabet that I think I might save for another lesson! Words like Kawaii かわいい, Konnichiwa こんいちは and Sakura さくら can be written in Hiragana. Katakana, though sometimes used for Japanese words, is most commonly used for foreign loan-words, like cola コーラ, ice cream アイスクリーム　and cake ケーキ and also foreign names (my own name, Jazmin ジャズミン ) and onomatopoeia in manga ( キラキラ (kirakira) = sparklesparkle etc.)

Kanji is tough. I won't go into detail here, but I will give you a brief outline now, for those who are curious! There are thousands of kanji characters, borrowed from Chinese, and usually a single Kanji or a compound of two (but occasionally more) signifies one word. They range from super simple 日 to really complicated looking 語, and most have multiple meanings and readings. This probably sounds really daunting and scary now, but that wasn't my intent! I just wanted to prepare people!

I hope you have enjoyed this, the first step to learning Japanese, and my first attempt at writing a lesson! Hopefully next time I will have a few followers to suggest things, if you like what you've read here, please do leave a comment! 

I hope my next post will include some useful learning resources and maybe a little vocabulary!

Have some adorable charts to help you out! One you get the hang of the characters, it teaches you some cute words too!

And you can even download them as PDF's to print out at home by going to these links (Here and here!)and clicking this: PDFをダウンロード