Hey everyone! My Japanese has changed a lot since I last posted on this blog! I completely forgot about it and I was about to start another! I don't know if anyone actually reads this, but I apologize anyway! (^_^')
I can't believe that I was only reading Manga and watching Anime when I last posted! I'm actually studying the language now. I have Hiragana nearly completely down now and I'm slowly working on Katakana. For some reason I don't like Katakana though... Kanji looks incredibly intimidating... T.T
I won't be able to give you a full update on my Japanese right away, so I'll do that over time. I think I'm planning to leave sometime next year to move to Japan! I'm very excited! I've got a job and I'm saving like crazy!
OK! So, here is something new for all of you to learn today (If your brand new to Japanese anyway)
The Japanese Writing System!
Japanese is split into three different alphabets. Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.
Hiragana is the basic alphabet. It's what all the kid's start off with and what most of the Manga are written in. On it's own it's terribly hard to read because there are no spaces between words! There are 48 characters in this alphabet
Katakana is for foreign words and names. I thought I wouldn't need it much, but the Japanese use a lot of foreign words and it's pretty important for understanding names! There are also 48 characters in this alphabet.
Kanji is the most intimidating. It's those complicated pictures that are difficult to write. What really makes it intimidating though is that fact that there are over 50,000 characters!!! 0.o I heard it takes 3,000 just to read a newspaper!
Combine all three of these together and you can read Japanese!
I'm working only a bit on reading to tell the truth. Reading is very difficult and without knowing any vocabulary I find it pointless. So I'm working on speaking more than anything. :)
Thanks for reading!
Feel free to comment if you have any questions or suggestions!
~Mina
