Join the new world

Today’s Music: Babymetal Thanks for the Link fix, Blood! c:

I believe tomorrow, August 6th, will be their last American show on their tour! Catch them in Denver Colorado if you are interested!





こんにちは！
Salutations, Curious Citizens of our Imperial Islands, I am your Homeroom teacher! Call me Aryzn-Sensei! *Epically glances off into the distant horizon*

Okay! So I decided to create a tutorial to Japanese language. The lack of Japanese in our community has been an issue, and some have even gone so far as to claim this a reason to allow Hungarian articles. But I am not writing this article to dispute the fallacies in that logic.

The truth is: Japanese is hard! But it’s also very fun ^.^ and a great hobby to pick up. However, many people just don’t know where to start. In this article I will show you the a few methods to cheat traditional linguistic education! I will show you a few of my favorite resources that will allow you to start studying the Japanese language, and how to progress your studies as you improve.

Japanese school children spend over a DECADE memorizing the Japanese language. The tools I want to show you will make you proficient at reading and writing Japanese, much more so than had you invested your time copying characters over and over and over (like the schoolchildren do).



So, sit back, play your favorite Japanese radio station, and get ready to cross off "Finally Learn Japanese" from your New Year’s resolution list!


First and Foremost!



Step 1:
Okay, as you probably know, there are three components to the Japanese writing system (Katakana, Kanji, and Hiragana).

Your first task is to learn both Hiragana and Katakana. The complete katakana script consists of 48* characters, whereas, the hiragana syllabary consists of 46 characters**. Don’t worry to much about Kanji right now, you will spend MUCH time on kanji later.

Now, here is why you are lucky to have been born in the information era where we have technology to help us! You can spend all your free time looking up each character and writing them out, over and over until your fingers go numb…..



……Or you can embrace technology!

There are several FREE memorization tools available on the internet, my favorite (and the one I use) is Memrise. This tool helps you to draw connections between Japanese characters and concepts that make it easy to remember each character. Here’s the best part… it works on your iPhone! (also free)

*Not exactly, you will see what I mean!
** Not exactly, you will see what I mean!


Then…



Step 2:
After you have a good understanding of Kata and Hira you can move on to the Japanese language! Kata and Hira give you a great foundation for learning Japanese. From here you can move on to grammar guides, such as Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese which will help you with constructing sentences with your Kana and Hira.

You can also start taking advantage of dictionary’s to understand words. Imiwa, Jim Breen's JDIC and so many others. Rikaichan makes this easy, just install it to your browser (it’s an extension) and it will help translate the meaning of Japanese text that you hover over with your mouse!

---

Tip: Manga counts as studying!! (Just remember to read Japanese Manga, otherwise you are defeating the purpose.)

Step two is the fun part, in Step two you should watch anime or read manga, or for the Serbs and Hungarians who apparently hate this aspect of Japanese society, read/listen to anything Japanese (news articles etc). When you hear a word you are no sure of, look it up with your knowledge of Kata/Hira!

---

Still, perhaps the best option is to invest in Rosetta Stone I have a copy myself and is great for learning! The only complaint I have is it doesn’t teach Kata/Hira characters right away.

Even with its faults, it is the best option… but it is rather expensive. Of course, you can learn Japanese without ever buying any program or tool! So if price is an issue, do not be discouraged, the method I am showing you today is completely free!

---

Tip: Finding a language partner is a great way to create accountability for your study and to understand the more subtle aspects of the Japanese language!

Here Is another great tool for Step 2!
NHK sponsored language lessons!


Kanji.....




(Still Step 2!)

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese writing system. There are over 2,000 kanji characters commonly used in Japan! Let that sink in to your mind while you recall there are a mere 26 characters in the English alphabet. This is why Japanese schoolchildren have to practice for many many years. But you don’t have that kind of time!

Luckily for you tools like Memerise and Anki (and others) make memorizing these characters a lot easier than hand writing them thousands of times (which is still encouraged if you have that much free time, but I am assuming you do not!)

Learn Kanji in Step 2, as you congruently study language structure by reading and listening to Japanese! Do not become discouraged, accept the fact that Kanji will take a lot of time to understand, and just take it one study session at a time!

---

That’s it! That is how to learn Japanese without spending a decade of practice, of course this is merely a shortcut…or a fast lane to understanding Japanese, there is soooo much more to understand that this method will not teach you. Just remember, this method will not make you a Japanese language master, but will be able to read, write, and understand Japanese with it!

Have fun, if anything is unclear, or you want to improve on anything I have posted, please comment below! ^.^


Bonus!










Peace, Love, and Understanding!



The eTatenokai is committed to spreading, and developing eJapan’s capacity for, Japanese culture in the eWorld.


読んでくれてありがとう！
よろしく、
大国主、アリジン