How to study Japanese for the first week and why kanji is so cool.

There is spoken language and the written language. Kanji has deep meanings contained
within each one. This is much different from what we are expecting, because we have become
through continuous use of our own native language, stifled by the alphabet. We can see the meaning
of things inside the kanji. Therefore from the get go, we should try to wean ourselves from the
temptation to look up words in Romaji to decipher meaning. We should use a dictionary like
Sanseido’s daily concise wa-ei jiten.

Week 1
Verbs - Drink, Sleep, Eat, Go, Work (nomu, neru, taberu, hataraku).
- Be able to put learned verbs in all their bases. Bases I – V
- create sentences using all base forms from I – V
- Test your created sentences on an actual Nihonjin to make sure they really work.

Nouns: coffee, tea, milk, water, coca cola, sake, Aquarius, beer, juice (KO-hi, o-cha, gyu^nyu^,
mizu, koka kora, sake, akuariusu, bi-ru, ju-su

Adjectives – oishii, suteki na, benri na, okii, nagai, samui, atsui, chisai, mijikai. (Delicious, cool,
convenient, big, long, cold, hot, small, short etc.)
- Adjectives- are fun to play with. Practice putting the adjectives in front of nouns etc

Grammar - Know the masu, masen, mashita, masen deshita etc (polite formations of verbs)
- Become acquainted with the various levels of politeness; humble, honorific, plain form

Example Grammar Construction –

Verb (Base II) + Tai desu = I want to verb - polite form. - Without desu, its plain form or P.F.

Verb (Base II) + masho^ = Shall we +verb or let’s +verb

Pronunciation - (distinguish between long and short vowel sounds) =

Be careful when studying Japanese for the first couple of times to make sure and pay attention to
detail. The Romanization methods employed by the various types of Romanization of the Japanese
Syllabary should be duly noted. For example in Japanese vowels can extend themselves into their
double impressions where two vowels are connected into one yet the true pronunciation will be an
elongated double vowel sound.