Hello folks. I haven't created a topic in awhile (I blame bad internet and being in college), so I decided to create one! Yay? Hey, don't yawn at me! Kidding aside. I took German in high school in a formal class setting. It was fun. However, I'd like to learn Japanese now. There are a myriad of reasons, but after learning a western language, I decided it would be fun to learn an eastern language next. And since I like Go, I figured it would be natural to choose Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. For now I've decided to go with Japanese since I have a greater exposure to that language than the other two.

However I have a question on hiragana spelling.

Konnichi wa is spelled: こんにちは

So if you sound that out it's: ko-n-ni-chi-HA

It's the "は" that confuses me since the sound is "HA". Wouldn't "わ" be the better choice because the sound is "WA"?

I'm still a beginner and I'm teaching myself with a beginner-advanced program I bought at Barnes & Noble. The book I have doesn't go into writing or why words are spelled the way they are, so if anyone is familiar with why it's spelled this way, I'd love to know why. It's also the same for Konban wa (Good evening). Konban wa is spelled: こんばんは

Also, how I found these sounds out is here: http://www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/hiragana.htm so I'm assuming it is right based on the spelling in my book and the sounds of the words.

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Slava Ukraini!

は is pronounced "ha" normally, but "wa" when used as particle.

In kon nichi wa / こんにちは / 今日は the は is considered a particle and thus pronounced "wa". It's literally "Today TopicMarkerParticle". Kon ban wa / こんばんは / 今晩は is the same, it's literally "This evening TopicMarkerParticle". It's a bit confusing because you often learn these as a single word greeting, so the particle nature is a bit concealed.

You'll run into the a similar issue with を which is pronounced "o" as a particle.

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Sanity is for the weak.

Oh I see. Well that makes sense. So I just basically have to know when は is used as a particle. I think I read something alone those lines before but I wasn't too sure about it. But this clears up that bit of confusion. Thanks a lot!

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Slava Ukraini!

Also watch out for へ　which is pronounced as え　when used as a particle.

And kudos for starting your study of Japanese; it's something I've found very rewarding

I actually have fourth year class in a few minutes...

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

I'm using memrise quite a bit, to learn vocab. I'm currently at around 800 words and 500 kanji. I recommend trying it. It's free, and one of the better vocab trainers(Even if it has its share of issues).

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Sanity is for the weak.

Well, I'm actually trying to memorize the sounds of hiragana right now. Because I have the opinion that if I hear the word, I'll have a rough estimation of hell to spell it if I know Hirigana. Of course my next step is obviously to learn Katakana and Kanji. I'm not even going to bother with learning Romaji as I've heard it's pretty useless. But I'm also trying to learn fundamental statements. So far I'm learning:

はじめまして。こんばんは。おはよぅございます。こんにちは。おやすみなさい。 どぅぞよろしく。~です。 わたしは~です。

This is the first part of Lesson 1 in my book.

Obviously it won't make much sense if you just read it out that way, but those are the phrases I'm familiarizing myself as they're some of the most common ones you'll see. Some I already knew from watching subbed anime. Like good morning or good afternoon.

Also: I'm not sure on writing yet. I'm likely mostly going to be typing (my hand writing sucks as it is), so do you think I can get a general familiarization with the characters without learning to write it? That's probably a dumb question, but I'm more worried about being able to type and recognize words rather than writing.

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Slava Ukraini!

Thanks! Also, there is something I've noticed. In phrases like "どぅぞよろしく" Does ぅ act as a sound extension? If I were to type it out it in Romaji it would be Doozo yoroshiku.

Edit: Also my plan is to spend the next semester just doing informal study on Japanese and maybe learn as much as possible. Then I'm going to take Japanese for business next semester. I may take Japanese for tourism as well just so I keep up with my studies. Then I plan on taking a full on course once I reach a four year college (I'm currently in a two-year community college).

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Slava Ukraini!

Japanese distinguishes between long and short vowels. The う does act here as a lengthener of the vowel sound. The お　sound in どうぞ should be held for twice the time.

You could read http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

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Sanity is for the weak.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll be sure to check it out. I actually changed my mind about the writing bit. I've been reading over the past half hour about memorization, and I guess practicing writing the characters of Hiragana can help my understanding quite a bit. And then I'll move on to Katakana and finally finish with Kanji (at least ones I should be familiar with).

I figure once I have the letters memorized I can move on to word recognition and finally sentence structure and grammer. This is probably a weird way of going about it, but it seems like this will be a method I can use.

I'll post updates periodically. I can't promise they'll be the most exciting things to read, but oh well. Hopefully I'll start off writing in English and end up writing entirely in Japanese (and actually make sense)!

さようなら！

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Slava Ukraini!

I'd also recommend the program Human Japanese to gain a foothold in the language (and learn hiragana and katakana more thoroughly while you're at it). As a bonus, the developer is about to release the new intermediate version in the next month or two so you could transition right into it if you wanted.

If you're ever looking for motivation or other random information on Japanese, you'd probably like the site All Japanese All the Time as well.

my opinion, I think this will help your pronunciation better by associating the sounds with the kana, instead of mispronouncing the romaji. stay away from romaji

I know. I'm not memorizing the spelling of Romaji but only the sounds represented in Romaji, if that makes sense. Obviously as a beginner I'll need to know that こ represents "Ko" and so forth. Also I'm memorizing them in sets of 7 and associating them with words. I'll probably spend a few days committing a set of seven to memory, and then to make sure I don't forget them, constantly write out the word associated with those seven.

I plan to take formal classes once I hit a four year college, but whatever I can learn before-hand will just put me ahead of the curve. And I'm currently watching Clannad (subbed) so I can have some exposure to the language. Of course it could have been any show, but that's the one I picked.

And now that I think about it, memorization is a bad word to use. I don't want to "memorize" hiragana. But I want to "understand" it as well as I understand my own alphabet. For example, if I say "K" I automatically know what sound it makes, words that use it, and things like that. And that's how I'd like it to be with hiragana before I finish. Then when I jump to katakana instead of connecting Romaji to katakana, I'll connect hiragana to katakana if that makes sense.

Edit: Actually, does anyone know any good live-action Japanese shows? Instead of just watching anime all the time, I wouldn't mind watching something that's NOT animation. Thanks in advance.

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Slava Ukraini!

Regarding kana vs. romaji, I'd definitely go with learning new words from hiragana and katakana, rather than romaji. It makes you think in that way naturally.

Additionally, I would recommend learning kanji early if you are serious about studying. When I lived in Japan for awhile, I wanted to learn just new words and grammar, staying away from kanji. I figured I'd at least understand people that way. But in the end, kanji makes you learn faster. When you see new words that you haven't studied, if you know the component kanji, you can guess what the meaning is, and even have a rough speculation of what the pronunciation might be.

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be immersed

So you'd suggest that I'd start with Kanji now? I've always wanted to learn Japanese but I've never had the tools to do so until fairly recently. And I know there tons of free sites out there, none of them really caught me for some reason. Maybe it's because at the times I tried, I was intimidated by having to learn 3 sets of characters, a whole new vocabulary, and a whole new set of writing rules.

I also read some things about Japan that made me, in a sense of the word, reassess what made me want to learn the language.

Excuse my rambling. When I picked up learning it again (I'd say roughly a week ago), I began learning some key words (IE greetings depending on time of day which really wasn't a difficult idea to learn since I took German in high school) but I recently figured it might be easier to learn the characters if I focused on them by one set at a time. I've already seen in this extra grammar book I bought how Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji can ALL BE USED IN THE SAME SENTENCE! I put that all in caps because that caused my brain to nearly explode when I found that out.

So, you wouldn't consider it a good idea to simply learn Hiragana, then jump to Katana, and finally onto Kanji?

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Slava Ukraini!

I actually would definitely recommend going from hiragana --> katakana --> kanji. If you can't read the phonetic alphabet, how can you be expected to learn the non-phonetic one? I was glad I had a firm understanding of the two alphabets first. And I also wouldn't really worry about learning to write until you can read both alphabets, and then learning how to write katakana first since its easier. I'm also a proponent of learning from romanji for a few reasons. First of all, if you don't then you can't learn anything until you know hiragana well enough to read it automatically which will slow down your grammar/speaking ability relative to someone who does. Second of all even after you've "learned" to read, the slowness of reading hiragana will be another thing to work through when you're trying to learn basic speaking patterns. Both methods have their advantages. I'm also an advocate of learning desu/masu form first, which is what I assume you're doing. If you're serious about learning, you also might want to think about getting a textbook which will consolidate a lot of the necessary information.

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

@hailthorn: Check your messages!

@HermanHiddema: I sent a message to my opponent. I'll post a message in the tournament thread when I get a schedule for the game (I forgot to add that in the PM)

@Jedo: When I said I wasn't going to bother with Romaji, I guess I stuck my foot in my mouth by saying I wouldn't use it "at all" because that's obviously not true. I'm using it to learn the sounds of words, and I'll probably have to use it when I initially begin learning sentence structure and things like that. Like I said, I'm an utter beginner at this stuff. So I imagine I'll likely go about things wrong quite a bit. By the way, I'm using a program for Japanese by Living Language. Ever heard of them? It seems pretty good. It has several books, a complementary audio CD, and I just noticed it actually came with a writing book as well. And there are supposed to be flash cards and games available. Haven't looked into it yet. I also got an addittional Japanese-English dictionary and a grammar book.

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Slava Ukraini!

Of course, learn hiragana and katakana before kanji. That shouldn't take that long, thoughh. I'm just saying that, in my case, I wanted to just learn vicab and grammar after learning hiragana, and I don't think that it was a good long-term approach.

If you are serious about learning, kanji is inevitable, so I'd get started as soon as I knew the phonetic alphabets.

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be immersed

Greetings,
I found the fastest way to securely learn both Katakana and Hiragana was the 2 books by James Heisig(Remembering the Katakana/Remembering the hirakana). he gets away from the usual rote system using imaginative memory in a unique way. One learns both systems solidly in about six hours spread over a few weeks. From there I learnt to write and read about 4000 kanji using his Remembering the Kanji books. Of course it is not always true but my consistent experience has been that those people I meet with fluent kanji reading and writing at a high level IE dissertation in Japanese , have all used these books. The other interesting thing is they still -enjoy- kanji whereas most students find them a real chore and quit fairly early on.
Sadly, of all the kanji I know, most Japanese　people don`t use them anymore.....
Best wishes,
Buri