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Writing Japanese- Lesson 1
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Published: 2008-06-09 02:20:10 +0000 UTC; Views: 38277; Favourites: 1110; Downloads: 697
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Writing 日本語 in Japanese: Lesson 1I prefer this layout much better, don't you?
Well anyway, this is the followup to my previous lesson on how to read romaji
Again, this is just my test to see how it will look. I still think it will be a while before I put these tutorials up regularly. I also wanted to see every-one's opinion on it.
Any suggestions would be great
In the future I plan to include practice worksheets that you can download as PDFs. Flashcards too!
But it's hard to have that sort of thing when the students only know 5 of the hiragana so this lessons has just the explanations. As the lessons go on the methods of practice will become more elaborate. I'll include things like practice words/sentences that you have to translate back and forth between Hiragana and Romaji.
Like I said, any suggestions on what I can do to help improve your studies will be greatly appreciated.
Good luck!
がんばります！
*edit*
Fixed some spelling errors
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Comments: 230
ah, I get exactly what you mean lol
It's tough learning to be a teacher.
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Thanx soooo much!
This helped me alot, *I'm going to japanese lessong but i still didn't get why we needed 3 types* 
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I think it's hard to understand it until you've started using each type.
Hiragana is basically used for grammatical reasons.
Katakana is used to write foreign words and loan words
Kanji is used for general writing of words
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Thankyou sooo much!
This helped alot!
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What does the symbol in Writing in Japanese means?
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I'm assuming you mean the symbol included in the title?
It's read as "nihongo" which means Japanese Language
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This is very helpful~
Wait, is Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji all used together to communicate in Japanese? Because I don't get why there's 3 writing systems unless you have to use all three to communicate.
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Yes they're all used together
I think I explained it in lesson 0 but here's a short explanation for your benefit.
Hiragana is the most basic. Each character represents a sound. It's what children learn first. Beginner students will start off with writing their whole sentences in Hiragana.
Katakana is also like Hiragana where each character represents a sound. It's used for foreign/borrowed words.
Company names, Foreign names, borrowed words (like "Orenji" Japanese word for Orange) etc.
For Kanji, each character represents an entire word. Words are more often written in Kanji than Hiragana.
For advanced Japanese sentences, the words are written in mostly kanji and the Hiragana is used to help form the sentences together. You might understand it a little better when I post the last lesson.
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Ok, cool! Thanks for telling me~ 
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English uses a "Subject-verb-object" word ordering
while Japanese uses a "subject-object-verb" word ordering.
Although it may sound weird to order sentences this way, when I started learning how to use verbs I found myself getting used it very easily. I think it's even easier to learn than English.
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How to type the symbols in the computer?
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i just copy and paste from a translater. I am cheeting.
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Okay, first thank you for making this. Second, if you read a book with its origons in Japan what writing system does it use? If it was from an English-speaking (or other languge other than Japanese) contry, which writing system does it use?
Arigtou!
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Japanese uses a mix of three writing systems.
Katakana is used with foreign words. Fore example: your name, companies/countries (McDonalds, Disney, America etc.), and borrowed words (Pen, Orange, etc.) If the word is not an authentic Japanese word then it uses Katakana.
Hiragana is the basic Japanese alphabet. It was created in Japan and used only for Japan.
The only time you'll probably ever see a sentence written entirely in Hiragana is in children books.
Kanji are characters adopted from Chinese script. Kanji is used most often and a Japanese person will need to know around 2,000 in order to successful read a newspaper.
The Japanese will write sentences using a mix of kanji and Hiragana (+Katakana as needed). In more advanced Japanese the Hiragana is used simply to help form the grammar while kanji represents specific words.
I'm not quite sure what you mean with your questions but any foreign text would be translated completely into Japanese so in the end the text isn't 'foreign' anymore.
Did that help at all? It's hard to explain everything unless I start going into Japanese grammar so this is just a short summary on how the writing systems work.
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Thank you so much for teaching me something new! I've always wanted to learn to write in Japanese, but it's always seemed so daunting. Your tutorial explains everything so well that I no longer feel as daunted by the task. Thank you!
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I'm glad that my tutorials have been so much help.
I always think it's a shame when people insist that Japanese is so hard just because of the writing. In my opinion I think writing is the most interesting part about the Japanese language.
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They have been a great help! I am so excited about learning Japanese now! I've got the characters for a-no & n down now. I'm working on the rest now
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I'm so glad
keep up with the good work!
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ありがとうございます.
I love Japanese. I can speak, read and write a little of it, but my mistake was first learning katakana.
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I remember having a fight with a friend once on whether or not someone should learn Hiragana or Katakana first. Ah, those where the days. The dorky little middle school kids who knew practically nothing about Japan but still obsessed over it ^.^ hehehe
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I think it's better to start as young as you can! When you get older it's actually harder to learn a language (your brain has a harder time with it or something like that). You don't have to do strict studying. Just introducing yourself to the basics. Learning words here and there.
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You're right! Thanks! Grazie! ありがとう!
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LOL kanji = cursive... lol curse-ive..... LOL just realized that... I HATE CURSIVE!!!!! so *runs away from kanji*
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lol I love your joke
Cursive is a paint to read but I like writing in cursive
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lol thanks :3
I dont like writing it...
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It's much easier than it seems!
Arigatou gozaimasu!
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so useful and informative - i loves it, i do!
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i cant find "ga" on the hiragana alphabet/list (is that what you can call it?) Where does the symbol for "ga" come?
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That will come at about lesson 10.
Ga looks like this ＞ が
It's just like か only two little strokes are added above it.
I purposely left those for later so that no one gets ahead of themselves and potentially confused ^.^
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This is so simple to follow yet so helpful and informative. Really can't wait for more.
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TT_TT Thank you! This is SO helpful! ♥
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Kanji? Kanji?? Kanji!! Did you say... KANJIIIIII!!!!??? Ack! -has heart attack-
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I would totally prove my awesome Japanese skills here...but I have no Japanese characters installed on my comp XD
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yes, kanji is the demon from the next world 0_0
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man, that's awesome!
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Maybe you were Asian in a previous life! ^.^ haha
If that is the case then your are indeed destined to learn Japanese.
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pfft. I just think it'd be cool is all. It's one of the foreign languages I'm considering.
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Oh really? What's the list of candidates (for foreign languages I mean)?
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Spanish and Japanese. That's it really. I might not take Spanish just cause I've tried so many times and the class ALWAYS goes wrong. It's not even ever anything I do, I always got stuck in a bad Spanish class, and it's tarnished my desire to learn the language.
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That's a shame
It's hard to learn when you don't have very good teachers.
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