Basic Sentence Pattern

みんなさん　おはよお！(Morning, everyone!)

Today I learned how to make basic sentences! Isn't that great? Now I can start to speak & write :D... Only this is just a start... There's still a long way to go.

Pattern:           A   です。

                       "It is A."

A being a noun. ですcan be translated to "it is". BUT it is not pronounced "desu", it is pronounced "dess".

Example:         さる　です。

                    "It is a monkey."

VERY simple but useful!! This is just our beginning in this Japanese long trip ;D

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Vocabulary I learned today: 

monkey - さる

grapes - ぶどう

strawberry - いちご

pumpkin - かぼちゃ

Yes - はい

pear - なし

cherry - さくらんぼ

mushroom - きのこ

peach - もも

octopus - たこ

watermelon - すいか

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Today's song: The Swellers "This is my Everest" ~This is our Everest, but we'll get to the top :)

Hiragana

Today's topic: ひらがな　(HIRAGANA)

¿Easy peasy? I do think so ;) Let's get on with it then!

 Key: Follow the pattern (a i u e o) 

[From left to right, from top to bottom]

Really bad quality pics... ò_ó mad at blogger, can't there be an intermediate size between large and extra large!? Well, sorry for that, I got this pic from Wikipedia, so there you can see it perfect.

These are the basic characters, but by adding dakuten (marks), such as ten ten (two little strokes on the top) or maru (little circle on the top) you get more sounds. 

Also there is combination hiragana: hiragana characters combined with a small やya/ゆyu/よyo  [These must be small, I just don't know how to fully use IME very well...]　

Also to write doubled consonants, before the consonant you write a small  つtsu [This must be small too...]

Here are examples so you understand, as today I'm not explaining myself very well...

Cafe: きっさてん (kissaten) /// Stamp: きって (kitte)

That's it with hiragana, just learn them. The pronunciation of hiragana is basically "Spanish-like" sounds. There are zillions of videos on Youtube ;D

Enjoy learning hiragana, it's fun and rewarding!!

Today's song: Yui Horie (& Unscandal) "Scramble" ~Very Positive! Because we are both happy now we know　ひらがな , it's a very big step on our Japanese ^^

First contact

みんなん　こんにちわ！(Hello everyone!) 

A few days ago I started seriously my Japanese learning project. My goal is not only being able to speak (fluently, hard goal haha) but also being able to read and write Japanese. Sounds tough, huh? 

So the first thing to ask ourselves is: In what is Japanese written? 

English is written using an alphabet, we all know that, you combine letters (26 to be precise...) to make words. Japanese language doesn't have an alphabet as such, instead it has 4 "alphabets". They're not actually alphabets, of course, but the general idea is that. Those 4 writting systems are: Romaji, hiragana, katakana and kanji.

Romaji is just the romanization of the Japanese proper writing systems. In other words, writing Japanese with the English alphabet. This is not accurate and should not be read with the English pronunciation (quite obvious...). So it's reasonable to think that this "alphabet" isn't very useful, 99% of the time you won't see romaji on real life Japanese, therefore it's a less waste of time to focus on the other 3 ;)

Hiragana is the base of Japanese. Technically it's a syllabary that contains 48 characters (but some of them combined and some of them with a "dakuten" makes them a few more). Learning it makes you achieve more and better :D By knowing it you can start right away reading Japanese (although you won't understand much as you lack grammar and vocabulary). Each character is made up of two English letters, presicely a vowel + consonant. Exceptions: single "n", those that are consonant + ya/yu/yo. For me hiragana is fun to learn, so cute and rounded :3

Katakana has the same characters as hiragana with the diference that katakana is sqared and edgy. Also Katakana is used to write foreign words and onomatopeya. That's the main diference: Hiragana, Japanese words, katakana, foreign words and sounds.

Kanji are the chinese characters. Those big and full of strokes unreadeable smudges on the paper. Hopefully I'll get round it too. I'll beat you kanji! Wahahaha! (Ok... I got too overly exited xD). Kanji was imported to Japan several times (that's why some kanji have more than one reading!). Kanji has on-yomi and kun-yomi. In other words, Chinese reading (on-yomi) and Japanese reading (kun-yomi). Some Kanji have multiple on readings and multiple kun readings, but I am following a kanji learning method that feels pretty good and focused on the 90% time readings used :). Therefore I don't waste my time and memory space in learning readings that are never used :D. All the vocabulary words can be (and mostly are...) written with kanji. There are +10000 kanji but luckily the Japanese Government has set up a list (Jōyō Kanji with 2,136 characters) with the most used kanji (not only most used but the only that are used). Rarely you will see kanji in real life (newspapers, etc) that aren't included on the list (rarely, not never ). Let's be optimistic about it!

These are the very basic ideas for today. I'll keep on going with my Japanese and telling you about it. Therefore I take in things better by writing here.

Today's song: Toe "Good Bye" So relaxing~

About

Hello everyone! I'm Rioter (id card says Christina... But, who cares? ;D). Welcome to "Rioter, You & Japan" blog.

A short presentation of myself: I'm a 19 years old bilingual (Spanish-English) girl. I study at university and I work as a part-time English teacher.

You may be thinking "What can this blog give me? It must be just another blog which talks about Japan...-_-" ...
So I'll try hard so that that thought doesn't even pop up  in your mind! (Not promising anything though... xD, but honestly I'll try my best).
The main reason for the blog to exist is to keep track of my Japanese learning. But to make it more useful and not so boring and lonely, I've thought that the best way to learn is helping each other. That's why here you can find everything so that your Japanese learning goes on smoothly. Also I'm interested in Japan's culture and curious everything it has, so you will as well find posts related to that.

To end I have to say that for sure you will also find very random stuff ^_~ I hope you enjoy every single bit of this blog!

See you~

P.D: Gente que prefiere el español: En un principio iba a hacer el blog en los dos idiomas (español e inglés) pero es, la verdad, mucho trabajo. Aún así si no dudéis en participar en cualquier idioma, preguntad, todo, etc ;) Y por supuesto pedidme traducciones si las necesitáis! (aunque está el traductor de google aquí en el blog, ya sabéis lo bien que traduce (sarcasmo..)
Disfrutad el blog!

P.P.S: I also have a personal blog... http://rioter-is.blogspot.com/ but there's where I speak my mind, show my art work and vent all my frustrations/anger/feelings in general.

P.P.P.S: Videos I post are in my youtube channal: http://www.youtube.com/user/613RiOteR
              Twitter --> http://twitter.com/#!/Rioter_nemorock
              If you need help with Spanish and/or English don't doubt in asking for it too! ;)