Japanese characters/sounds

 iTunes - Apps - search (Japanese)

Japanese has three characters: ひらがな(hiragana),かたかな(katakana),and 漢字(がんじ)(kanji). As I know, hiragana is for writing Japanese words, katakana is for writing words that comes from other languages such as English, and kanji is Chinese characters that used to present the meaning of hiragana. 

I learned Japanese in my high school before, but I forgot almost everything. These two Apps on iTune helped me review the hiragana and katakana. And they are FREE (the second one has more lessons for paid version). I searched 'Japanese' under 'education' in Applications on iTune to find them.

This one only have hiragana and katakana. When I use it, it helped me focus on hiragana and katakana. And the content is almost the same as the one below.

There are sections including lessons, study cards, flashcards, quizzes, and study bank.

This one have a bit more to learn for beginners other than hiragana and katakana, for example, some basic grammars, conversation words, and counting in Japanese. I was using this one at the beginning for reviewing my hiragana and katakana. Then I realized I should not look at anything else before I'm fully done with hiragana and katakana. So it depends on the needs.

I had problem to pronounce し(shi),ち(chi),つ(tsu),て(te), and ふ(fu). So I listen how my iTouch 'pronounce' them again and agian both a single character and in a word. And read how it sounds like in English. Also my teacher helped me a lot on it. he told me, 'shi' pronounces like the 'sh' of 'she', and 'fu' is actually pronounce more like 'hu' by Japanese.

No matter how to learn it, hiragana and katakana are the basis of learning Japanese.
This is the chart of Hiragana and katakana:

Greetings

おはよう（ございます）。		Ohayoo (gozaimasu)	Good morning (polite)
こんいちは。		Konnichiwa	Good afternoon
こんばんは。		Konbanwa	Good evening
おやすみなさい。		Oyasuminasai	Good night
いいゆめ。	Iiyome		Good night
‘Konnichiwa’ is generally used for day time.
さようなら。		sayoonara	Good bye
じゃね。		jane	Good bye
それじゃ、また。		soreja mata	Good bye
People usually say ‘sayoonara’ if they are going to leave for a long time. The other two are more common to use.‘soreja mata raishu' is what I say to my Japanese teacher when I leave the class. It means‘see you next week'.
ありがとう（ございます）。		Arigatoo (gozaimasu)	Thank you (polite)
すみません		Sumimasen	Excuse me/sorry
ごめえ		Gomee	sorry
いってきます。		Ittekimasu	I’ll go and come back
いってらっしゃい。		Itterasshai	Please go and come back
ただいま。		Tadaima	I’m home
おかえりなさい。		Okaerinasai	Welcome home
For example, when I leave my home, I would say ‘ittekimasu’ to my mom. And my mom would say ‘itterasshai’ to me. It just like I say "I'm going out", and my mom says "take care". When I come back home, I would say ‘tadaima’ to my mom. And my mom would say ‘okaerinasai’ to me. Well, I live by myself now, so I don't have anyone to say with. But it's good to practice whenever I go out and come back. (I hope it's not that stupid @.@)
いただきます。		Itadakimasu	Thank you for the meal (before)
ごちそうさま。		Gochisoosama	Thank you for the meal (after)
はじめまして。 どうぞ　よろしく。		Hajimemashite Doozo yoroshiku	How do you do? Nice to meet you
When people introduce themselves, they usually say ‘hajimemashite. Doozoyoroshiku’ at the end. It means something like "It's the first time we meet each other, please tell me if I did something wrong."

Introduction

I'm currently taking Japanese Classes once a week. And hopefully I can go Japan to continue to study Japanese next year. Language is something that we need to study and use everyday. I hope this blog could help both the reader and myself to learn Japanese on a regular basis.

I will share my learning experience in this blog:

• ‘My Story' talks about anything related to my interests of Japanese.
• ‘Use Japanese in my life' explains what all I learned including grammars, sentence structure, vocabulary, and the situation that I can use my Japanese.
• ‘Information' is what I feel useful for learning Japanese and understand Japanese.

I will update every Tuesday and weekend.

In addition, my first language is Chinese, if there is any mistake in my English writing, please correct me so that it's more comfortable for other people to read it. So does my Japanese knowledge. Thank you.