こんにちは (Konnichiwa) everyone!

Welcome back to my blog, and thank you for joining me on my journey of learning Japanese. It’s been an exciting first week, and I’m eager to share my progress with you all. And if still wandering why I am learning Japanese, be sure check out my very first blog Welcome to my Japanese Learning Journey

The Importance of the Three Core Skills

This week, I focused on understanding the fundamental skills required to learn any language: reading, writing, and speaking. Mastering these three areas is crucial for effective communication and comprehension. With respect to Japanese Language, here is how I plan to tackle these three things.

• Reading → this can be done through Mangas and Books
• Writing → You need to practise the stroke orders. I have an ipad where I take notes and practise writing
• Speaking → In Japanese, speaking is very crucial because it is not a stretched language so every sound has a fixed and equal duration. Pronunciation is very crucial, I am thinking of watching videos and anime to address this problem.

Discovering the Japanese Writing System

Japanese writing and reading is quite difficult because of the sheer effort it takes to reach a certain level of average competency in the language. This is because Japanese writing consists of pictograms { called Kanji } which doesn’t have a straight forward pattern and it takes a lot of time and effort to master.

The writing system in Japanese, consists of three scripts: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Each system has its own significance and plays a part in a sentence while writing. Both Hiragana and Katakana are together called Kana. Both Hiragana and Katakana are together called Kana. So, Kana are fairly easier to learn. They both represent the sound syllables that make up the Japanese language.

Following are the three scripts used in Japanese Writing.

Hiragana (ひらがな)

This is usually used to represent Japanese words and grammatical elements such as particles.

• すみません { sumimasen } : this means sorry or excuse me. This will be written in Hiragana cuz its native to japan.

Katakana (カタカナ)

This is usually used for words of foreign origin that is not native to Japan.

• ネクタイ { nekutai } : this means necktie. This will be written in Katakana, because its a foreign word
• More or less Katakana is used to write the loan words. And mostly loan words will be English words with a Japanese Pronunciation. So, once we learn katakana we already have learned thousands of words in Japanese.

Kanji (漢字)

This is the most difficult part of Japanese language from a learner’s perspective. Kanji is the real deal and its the essence of Japanese writing and it will be floating around in all forms of writings whether book or manga or newspaper or pretty much any reading material will have kanji.

Kanji are from Chinese origin. Japanese adopted these Chinese characters a long time ago to write their language.

Kanji - Meaning + Sound

😂

Fun Fact Alert: If you've ever played Little Alchemy, you might see the resemblance in these pictograms. Combining two crude elements results in something new, just like combining characters here gives new meanings.

There are also some other terminologies that are used:

Romaji

For new learners, Romaji represents the pronunciation of words written in Hiragana. It uses the Latin alphabet and is helpful when starting out. English annotations, smaller in text size, are placed near the actual Japanese scripts to help learners read and pronounce correctly.

Furigana

Sometimes, Hiragana is written above or beside Kanji characters in a smaller size to indicate their pronunciation. This is called Furigana.

Kana

Kana (仮名) are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, or morae. In current usage, Kana most commonly refers to Hiragana and Katakana.

Hiragana and Katakana have the same syllabaries but are written in different forms. Each set corresponds to the letters in the other set. In each set, there are:

• 5 vowel sounds: a, i, u, e, o
• Series of consonant sounds starting with k, g, s, z, t, d, n, h, b, p, m, y, r, w

Japanese writing involves two ways of writing:

1. Left to right and top to bottom
2. Top to bottom and right to left

For example, here is how a Japanese sentence looks. Notice how all three types of characters are used:

Starting with Hiragana

I started my practice with Hiragana, the more commonly used Kana script. Learning Hiragana is essential as it forms the foundation for reading and writing in Japanese. I have watched multiple videos and read articles on it. Then I stumbled upon this video

Some Facts About Hiragana

• It is used to write functional words like grammatical particles.
• It is also found at the end of adjectives and verbs.
• Many common words are written in Hiragana rather than Kanji.
• It is used to substitute Kanji characters that you don’t know.
• These are written above or beside the Kanji and this is called Furigana.

Below is the chart for Hiragana Characters. We can use the column letter and the vowel to create sound for example - か (ka)　き (ki)　く (ku)　け (ke)　こ (ko)

We can modify the sound of some of the sounds using ( “ ) Dakuten and ( o ) Handakuten in the upper right corner of the characters. These are called Modifiers.

( “ ) Dakuten (だくてん)

• K sound change to G: が (ga)　ぎ (gi)　ぐ (gu)　げ (ge)　ご (go)
• S sound change to Z: ざ (za)　じ (ji)　ず (zu)　ぜ (ze)　ぞ (zo)

Similarly for T and H sounds.

• T sound change to D:
• H sound change to B

( o ) Handakuten (はんだくて)

• H sound change to P : ぱ (pa)　ぴ (pi)　ぷ (pu)　ぺ (pe)　ぽ (po)

Progress and Reflections

I am following along with this video as of now. And I am trying to learn every word and phrase she brings up during teaching and write that in the notes.

• I have learned up to the S-column in the Hiragana chart mentioned earlier. I am also studying its corresponding Dakuten modifier.
• I have found a worksheet to practice Hiragana along with the stroke order of each character. I will pin this in the comments. Make sure to check that out.
• If you want my notes, I can share them with you as well. Ask me in the comments if you want them.

Looking Ahead

In the coming weeks, I plan to:

• Continue practicing Hiragana until I’m comfortable with all the characters.
• Start incorporating basic vocabulary and phrases to build my reading and speaking skills.
• Explore additional resources, including apps and online tools, to supplement my learning.

If you’re also starting your Japanese learning journey, I encourage you to share your progress, tips, and resources in the comments. Let’s support each other and make this journey enjoyable and productive.

Last Week’s Blog - Welcome to my Japanese Learning Journey

Thank you for following along with my first week’s progress. Stay tuned for more updates next week as I continue to dive deeper into the beautiful world of the Japanese language.

ありがとうございます (Arigatou gozaimasu) – thank you very much!