My Japanese Learning Story

 

It is like a balloon around me for so many years, Now I want to catch it and hold in my hand.

My interesting in Japanese started by watching 'Detective Conan', which is a Japanese anime. I watched the first hundred episodes on TV for the whole year of my grade five. Then I catching it by watching online. At the same time, I switched from watching dubbed Chinese version to original Japanese version. By searching Japanese anime, I noticed that a few favour cartoon I used to watch are all Japanese anime. 

From watching anime to reading manga, then to watching Japanese drama, I wanted to talk like how they talk in TVs and dramas, to know more about the culture, and to experience the life. When I was at grade 12, I attended an Japanese Course outside of school for around one year. I though I could go Japan for travel in that summer. But the price bitted me up at that time. And two years later, I went back to China and did a one-month review of my Japanese. I like those days; I didn't need to think about anything and just focus on learning Japanese. At that time, I felt that I Japanese is part of my childhood, and I want to really know it now.

Last summer, I knew some private Japanese University provides Japanese language learning program. I started to make a plan for going Japan for a year next year. It is a great opportunity to focus on learning Japanese and the culture. And the first step is to review my Japanese study and keep the knowledge stable. Now I want to learn on a regular basis  and learn deeply so I won't forget easily it in the future. It doesn't matter if it can help me on my career, but I know it will help me to have a more enjoyable life. 

Test Your Japanese Online

Hiragana and Katakana

http://www.realkana.com/

A simple website to practice Hiragana and katakana.

J-CAT self test

http://www.j-cat.org/en/

This is a website to test your Japanese level. It is convertible to Proficiency Level and JLPT level. You can use it online for free. And it automatically adjust the questions based on correct/incorrect answer you did for previous questions.

This is my bag

これ/それ/あれ

In Japanese, you use different word to describe the bag when the bag placed differently. You use これ when the bag is closer to you, use それ when the bag is closer to the person you talking to, and use あれ when the bag is not close to both of you.

For example, when A says about her bag with B, she says 'これはわたしのかばんです." which means ' This is my bag." If A wants to say about B's bag, she would say 'それはかのじょのかばんです.' that means 'that is her bag.' And the last one あれ, bag C is not close to both A and B. So A may say 'あれはだれのかばんですか.' it means 'whose bag is that?" Remember, you don't need to use a question mark for a question here in Japanese, in this A is B sentence, just simply add a 'か' after 'です'. More over, if you want to say 'this is not my bag.' you need to change the 'です' to 'じゃありません.'

 

English	Japanese	Pronunciation
A-A: This is my bag.	これはわたしのかばんです.	Kore wa watashi no kaban desu.
A-B: That is her bag.	それはかのじょのかばんです.	Sore wa kanojo no kaban desu.
A-C: Whose bag is that?	あれはだれのかばんですか.	Are wa dare no kaban desuga.
Vocabulary
これ	Kore	This
それ	Sore	That
あれ	Are	That
かばん	Kaban	Bag
かのじょ	kanojo	Her

University Self Introduction

"I'm Sherry. I'm 4th year student. My major is business."

The most simple sentence structure is 'A is B.' In Japanese, it is 'AはBです。(A wa B de su).' Here は(ha) pronounces は(wa). We can make a self introduction just by using 'A is B' as long as we know the related vocabulary. I usually do a simple quick self introduction in the first class of the semester like below:

English	Japanese	Pronunciation
I'm Sherry.	わたし は Sherry です。	watashi wa Sherry desu.
I'm 4th year student.	わたし は よねんせい です。	watashi wa yonensee desu.
(My) major is business.	せんもん は ビジネス です。	senmon wa bijinesu desu.

Vocabulary
わたし	watashi	I
よん *	yon	Four
ねんせい	nensee	...year student
せんもん	senmon	major
ビジネス	bijinesu	business

* Four is yon, but when it comes to fourth year, it is yo instead of yon. I will make a summary of this later on as 'Numbers Summary'.

Now I want to make '(My) major is business.' to exactly 'My major is business.' I will use 'AのB (A no B)'. の(no) is a particle to connect two nouns. 'My major' could be translated to Japanese 'わたし の せんもん.' So this sentence could be written as:

            わたし の せんもん は ビジネス です。

           (watashi no senmon wa bijinesu dusu.)

Further more, if I introduce my self to someone else outside of my school, I would say 'I'm York University student.' which is:

           わたし は Yorkだいがく の がくせい です。

           (watashi wa Yorkdaigaku no gakusei desu.)

Here, 'だいがく (daigaku)' means 'university', and 'がくせい (gakusei)' means student.

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.