Updates Introduction Hiragana Katakana Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Lesson 3 Lesson 4 Lesson 5 Lesson 6 Lesson 7 Lesson 8 Lesson 9 Lesson 10 Lesson 11 Lesson 12 Lesson 13 Lesson 14 Lesson 15 Lesson 16 Lesson 17 Lesson 18 Lesson 19 Lesson 20 Lesson 21 Lesson 22 Lesson 23 Lesson 24 Lesson 25 Lesson 26 Lesson 27 Lesson 28 Lesson 29 Lesson 30 Lesson 31 Lesson 32 Lesson 33 Lesson 34 Lesson 35 Lesson 36

Lesson 37 Lesson 38 Lesson 39 Lesson 40 Lesson 41 Lesson 42 Lesson 43 Lesson 44 Lesson 45 Lesson 46 Lesson 47 Lesson 48 Lesson 49 Lesson 50 Lesson 51 Lesson 52 Lesson 53 Lesson 54 Lesson 55 Lesson 56 Lesson 57 Lesson 58 Lesson 59 Lesson 60 Lesson 61 Lesson 62 Lesson 63 Lesson 64 Lesson 65 Lesson 66 Lesson 67 Lesson 68 Lesson 69 Lesson 70 Lesson 71 Lesson 72 Lesson 73 Lesson 74 Main Menu About

INTRODUCTION

Now, I know we just want to jump right into learning, but before we begin, we have to learn a couple basics. First of all, Japanese has three different alphabets: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana is the native Japanese language and is the one you will probably see most frequently. It will also be the first alphabet you will begin to learn. Katakana is an alphabet specifically for non-Japanese words. Katakana could be compared with Roomaji, or the writing of Japanese words into English. If your name is not Japanese, you would write it in this alphabet. The Roomaji of Katakana is usually written in capital letters, just to distinguish them.The third alphabet, and the hardest one, is Kanji, which is symbols adopted from the Chinese language. There are over 1,000 Kanji symbols but you only need to know approximately 600 to be able to read any Japanese material.
As we move on through the lessons, I will write the phrases and such in Roomaji. After you familiarize yourself with the different alphabets, you will able to start writing the sentences in Japanese. For now, though, we will use Roomaji.

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