Day One

Yesterday was the first day of Japanese, and my excitement was not unfounded.  Ito-sensei seems like a great teacher, and has a sense of humor on top of that.

We covered some very basic things like the syllables in the language and some pronunciation, and though it wasn't a big mental, stretch since I'd covered most of it myself, I did pick up some very informative tidbits:

• ん (n) is called the syllabic nasal.  Makes sense, but it's cool to have a name for it.
• I learned the difference between voiced and voiceless consonants.  This too makes sense, but I guess I hadn't really though much about it.  'k' is a voiceless consonant because its sound is made entirely without vocal chords.  'g' is the associated voiced consonant because it's the exact same sound as 'k' except you add vocal chords.  Neat!
• ふ is usually written on charts as 'fu', but is actually pronounced more like 'hu'.  Had no idea, but that's definitely a good thing to know.

There's a lot of nuance to pronunciation that I'll have to pick up on, but hearing Japanese more and practicing it should help with that.  A lot of the sounds are somewhere between the English counterparts.  ん(n), for example, from what I can tell is like an English 'n' sound but a little closer to 'm'.  And 'r' is right in the middle of English 'r' and 'l'.

I got reading homework too!  It's like I'm in school again or something!

Learning Resources: Part One

So when I first decided to learn Japanese, the goal was to teach myself for a whole host of reasons (finances, time, pacing, &c.), and so I immediately turned to the number one resource for learning new information: Borders bookstore.  And then realized I might have been too hasty, and used the Internet.  =P

One of the first sites I came across that I really loved was Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide.  It's beautifully laid out, complete, and accurate.  I'm especially a fan of the fact that it's not a site trying to teach you as quickly as possible or just teach "survival" Japanese, but it actually goes through each bit of the language in as much order as makes sense.  I've read through most of the beginner stuff on the site, but didn't really do any of the provided exercises, so very little of it stuck with me.  I will definitely keep referring to there when I forget a nuance of grammar though.

I prefer to learn by understanding concepts and patterns and applying them, rather than by rote memorization (which is another reason I really liked the above site; it teaches why the sentences are structured the way they are).  But there's nothing better for vocab and learning the alphabet (or syllabaries in the case of Japanese) than good ol' flash cards.  And for that, I used smart.fm.  However, since then smart.fm has decided to close up its doors and become a pay site, so it suddenly became a lot less useful, and not worth linking to.  It took me a while to find a replacement, but I finally found Memrise.  They're just starting out and the Japanese section is still labeled "beta", so expect some less-than-ideal organization and the occasional misspelled or incomplete card, but overall I really like the way it works.  They are admittedly a little heavy-handed with their  "garden" metaphor, but it's not a bad metaphor, and it doesn't get in the way, so I guess that's okay.

As for books, the class (that starts tomorrow!!) will be using Genki I, which from what I understand is pretty much the de facto learning tool for Japanese as far as books go.  I found a book called Japanese for Busy People (the Kana version!) that I actually liked and made it a few pages into, but my laziness won out and I didn't get very far in it.  Still, not a bad substitute for Genki if you're looking for something more affordable.

Class starts tomorrow!  I'm struggling to keep myself from going home and starting into the workbooks ahead of time, but I guess I should wait...

I'm going to learn Japanese!

... or, at least that's the goal.


I've signed up for a Japanese class at my local (ish) community college that's starting in August, and I'm getting excited as the start of classes nears.  I've spent some time over the last couple years trying to teach myself a little Japanese, but found that without someone holding a grade over my head (even a grade that doesn't matter since I'm all done with school), I lack sufficient motivation to learn.


In my quest to teach myself though, I've come across many useful resources on the Internet that have helped me along, one of which is blogs of other people learning Japanese.  The beauty of these kind of blogs is that I can make "informative" posts, but simultaneously reinforce what I've learned in class by teaching it to the Readers (equally useful even if in reality I have no readers).


As with all of my blogs, any sort of comments or interaction is welcome and encouraged.


And now, a quick test to make sure Blogger can handle Japanese characters (if this doesn't work... well, that would be bad):

 こんいちわ、日本語！

Am I allowed to use commas in Japanese?  Did I use that one appropriately?  I have no idea!