May 2012
Japanese Lessons: The Basic of the Basics
Hey guys! Remember when I mentioned I do some posts with some basic (and eventually slight intermediate) level Japanese stuff? Well, here it is! XD I’ve decided to break it up like this: Vocabulary, Grammar, Useful Phrases, Literature, Geography, Culture/Society, and History.
How I plan on breaking it up is placing Vocabulary, Grammar, and Useful Phrases all in one post, with Literature, Geography, Culture/Society, and History in another. The second group will be kept fairly short and brief, but I think, if one really wants to know another language, than these elements are also very important to know (and I want to make sure that I don’t forget the stuff I learned as an Asian Studies major! XD)
Anyway, I didn’t quite break it up that way this time, because I decided to add in an extra section on how to type Japanese on your computer. But, that is how I plan to do it in the future. I also added a bit of audio and plan on doing that every time.
Found under the Read More because, well, this is an extremely long post!!
Good guide and a worthy read, something that’s worth mentioning is that in Japanese, syllables, vowels and all that shit never change how they sound no matter what unlike English.
For instance うさぎ and うちゅう have the same “u | う” sounds. No bullshit like how the “a” sound changes for different words like cat and eat. Or the dreaded silent unpronounced words like g for gnat. It’s one thing I’m thankful for because even as a native speaker it took forever for me to be able to pronounce new unknown words correctly the first time.
Just my two cents ^^;
Ah! Very good input! :D And yes, this is true.
Though, there are times in Japanese were a sound may change. For instance, with the Japanese word です (desu). Even the common and native way for this word to be pronounced is as “dess” rather than “de.su”, this can happen with すき (suki), too, where it gets pronounced more as “ski” rather than “su.ki.” For and example in the middle of a sentence, さすが (sasuga) tends to sound more like “sasga” rather than “sa.su.ga” when spoken.
This is a case of i and u sounds becoming silent. You can hear it a bit when someone is saying “kuso!” in an anime, where it becomes more like “kso” rather than “ku.so” in pronounciation, and an even better example is of “chikushou!” where it becomes like “chikshou” rather than “chi.ku.shou.”
It should also be noted that the “T” in “tsu” is also rather soft, and nearly silent in pronunciation, but it is there. If it wasn’t, then you would be getting “su” instead of “tsu.”
Though, these occurrences of silent sounds don’t happen as much as in English and they tend to be easily picked up and understood (I mean, with a watching of an episode of anime you can pick up on this). So, it is not as “written in the rules” nor as important when learning the language as it is with English, where this can make the difference between saying something in the present tense or saying something in the past tense (thank you “read!”).
A very good refresher, and I am still a derp on proper grammar structures so I’ll be keeping up with this. If you ever wanted to try learning Japanese here’s a good start to the basics ouo/
just because you love a character doesn’t mean they’re not a little shit
#Is suddenly inflicted with a cough fit of Jack Vessalius
Amen
2 dreams and a nightmare :D
welp
WELP
It’s been awhile since I had a mini dream within a dream nightmare. Wasn’t that scary in the “suddenly wakes up with a racing heart and feels impending doom” sense, just generally woke up going
end.
Why is this so funny.
I’m in a classroom nO STOP
My little brother got into outer space and stuff so my step-mom bought him a place mat with all the planets on it. When I first saw it, I was upset, because it was newer and so Pluto wasn’t labeled. I was about to say something when I noticed something…
Pluto is there.
The artist remembered Pluto.
Guys…
The artist drew Pluto crying.
