Beginner Japanese – My Nihongo Journey: Recent Episodes
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みなさん、こんにちは！How has your summer been so far? It’s quickly coming to an end for us here in Michigan, as our weather is starting to cool off a little bit now. Have you been studying your hiragana lately? I hope so, because today we will be learning two more columns, although, it will only be 8 hiragana today, instead of 10. Are you ready? Then let’s get to learning! The eight hiragana we will be learning today are as follows: “ma, mi, mu, me, mo, ya, yu, & yo” or 「ま、み、む、め、も、や、ゆ、よ」 respectively. They all follow the same pattern that we have seen in the last few lessons. And there are no exceptions for these two hiragana columns. Besides, after learning all about the N & H-Columns, the T-Column, the S-Column, the K-Column, and the Vowels, you should really be getting a lot better at these, right? Well, let’s get some more hiragana under our belts! ま 「ま」 is the first of the eight hiragana we will learn today. 「ま」 is pronounced “ma”, and is the simple combination of the “m” sound and the 「あ」 kana we learned over a month ago. A good way to remember this kana is to think […]
The post Learning Hiragana Series – Lesson 6: The M-Column & Y-Column appeared first on My Nihongo Journey.
みなさん、こんにちは！I hope you guys have been studying and enjoying your summer! Today will be your first duo Hiragana column lesson! That’s right, today you will not be learning only 1 column, but 2, at the same time. That means today we will be learning 10 new hiragana! Are you ready for this? I think you are, so let’s move forward shall we? The ten hiragana we will be learning today are as follows: “na, ni, nu, ne, no, ha, hi, hu/fu, he, ho” or 「な、に、ぬ、ね、の、は、ひ、ふ、へ、ほ」 respectively. They all follow the same pattern that we have seen in the last few lessons. And there are no exceptions really for these two hiragana columns. Besides, after learning all about the T-Column, the S-Column, the K-Column, and the Vowels, you should really be getting a lot better at these, and expect something a little harder today, right? Well, let’s double up our learning and see just how far we’ve come! な 「な」 is the first of the ten hiragana we will learn today. 「な」 is pronounced “na”, and is the simple combination of the “n” sound and the 「あ」 kana we learned a month ago. (Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a whole […]
The post Learning Hiragana Series – Lesson 5: The N-Column & H-Column appeared first on My Nihongo Journey.
みなさん、こんにちは！I hope you all have had a fantastic week, and have been able to practice everything up until now. This weeks’ lesson is a little late, because my birthday was on Wednesday! I had a lot going on and had a lot of fun. I’ll do a separate post to talk more about my birthday, and what my ともだち Masaru sent to me. But, for now, let’s dig into the next lesson, shall we? Today, we will be learning the T-Column of the Hiragana chart! So, after learning the S-Column, the K-Column, and the Vowels, we will be digging into the T-Column. Let’s have some fun and study hard together! Please note, that today there will be -two- exceptions to this column. So, today we will be learning, “ta, chi, tsu, te, and to”, or 「た、ち、つ、て、と」 respectively. た 「た」 is the first part of the T-Column that we will learn together. 「た」 is pronounced “tah” and is simply the combination of the “t” sound and the 「あ」 kana we learned three weeks ago. This is a relatively easy kana to remember, but to better help you, picture the letter “t” and the letter “a” being written out in the kana […]
The post Learning Hiragana Series – Lesson 4: The T-Column appeared first on My Nihongo Journey.
みなさん、こんにちは！Happy Independence Day everyone! Today, American’s are celebrating our country’s independence and having barbecues and parties and just having a good old time. Me, however, I’m busy working hard for you guys. Don’t worry, I am more than happy to do this today. 🙂 I also wanted to quickly note, before moving on to the lesson, that the ability to leave comments was experiencing some issues, and those have since, been fixed apparently. So please, leave me a comment below so I know without a doubt that they are working! Now, on to the S-Column lesson! So, you’ve finally learned as much of the K-Column that you can muster, and are ready to learn the next column. Well, you’re in luck, as today we will cover the S-Column of the Hiragana chart! It’ll be a lot of fun, and you’ll get to learn about your first weird exception. Sounds like a blast right? Well, it is, so let’s get to learning all about this S-Column! We will cover “sa-shi-su-se-so”, or 「さ、し、す、せ、そ」respectively. さ 「さ」 is the first part of the S-Column that we will learn together. 「さ」 is pronounced as “sa”, and is simply a combination of the “s” sound and […]
The post Learning Hiragana Series – Lesson 3: The S-Column appeared first on My Nihongo Journey.
みなさん、こんにちは！I hope you guys have been enjoying this series so far, although, we still have a long way to go. I might have to do more than one of these a week, if we truly want to build up some learning steam, but we will see what my timetable allows. However, that aside, this week, we will focus on learning the K-Column of the Hiragana chart! Today’s lesson is all about the K-Column from the hiragana chart. This is just a “k” sound, plus the vowel sounds you learned last week! That means, this week we will be learning all about “ka, ki, ku, ke, & ko” or 「か、き、く、け、＆こ」. You don’t have to worry about any weird exceptions from this column either, so it will be a nice and easy learning week. か 「か」 is the first part of the K-Column that we will learn together. 「か」 is pronounced like “kah” sound a crow makes, and is simply a combination of the “k” sound and the 「あ」 kana we learned last week. It is also the ending sound of my name, “Jessica”. This is a relatively easy kana to remember, but picture a crow flying towards a cliff to make […]
The post Learning Hiragana Series – Lesson 2: The K-Column appeared first on My Nihongo Journey.
こんにちは！ Are you ready to begin learning hiragana with me? This will be my first and most important hiragana lesson for you, as it will build up your ability to pronounce almost every other hiragana later on down the road. You see, today we will be learning the vowels, or 「あ、い、う、え、お」(A, I, U, E, O, respectively) column, and these five hiragana will be attached to almost every other hiragana found. These same vowels sounds will be repeated quite often with various consonants, so let’s learn these five hiragana perfectly before moving forward with more! あ 「あ」 is the very first bit of hiragana we will learn together. 「あ」 is pronounced like the “a” in “bar”. Or, like when you visit a dentist, and the dentist tells you to open your mouth wide, and say, “ahh”. To help you remember this kana, think back to the dentist and how your mouth would like wide open, as shown below. い 「い」is the next kana we will learn today. 「い」is pronounced like the “e” sound in “eat”. You also hear this sound while saying, “Hawaii”, so a good way to remember this kana will be to picture two palm trees next to each […]
The post Learning Hiragana Series – Lesson 1: Vowels appeared first on My Nihongo Journey.
こんにちは！ I will be putting together a series on learning hiragana, to not only help myself solidify the hiragana I have learned, but to also help guide you through learning hiragana as well. Learning hiragana ensures that the rest of your Japanese learning goes smoothly. To say that learning hiragana will create a foundation for your Japanese, would be an extreme understatement. You see, by taking the time to learn hiragana, you will be learning the very basics of Japanese pronunciation. This was the first step for my own journey to learning Japanese, and should be yours as well. What is Hiragana exactly? You will find that hiragana is one of three parts of the Japanese writing system. The other two parts of the writing system are katakana and kanji, which we will focus on later. Hiragana is also a syllabary, and not an alphabet. Confused yet? Let’s examine this difference in greater detail, shall we? An alphabet as you know, is full of letters which represent single consonants and vowels. Where as, a syllabary represents characters that contain the sounds of syllables. Need an example? Well, in English, the alphabet we have consists of letters such as “i” and […]
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