Ok, let’s learn some Kanji today! You’ll see that it’s not so scary!

口【くち】 – mouth
Just picture an open mouth except um… more square. This box shows up ALL THE TIME in Kanji so MAKE SURE you get the correct stroke order.

五【ご】 – five
I guess it kind of looks like 5 with a line on the bottom

日【ひ】- sun; day
Similar to mouth, it’s a circle made into a square with a line in the middle to represent sun rays or something.

木【き】 – tree
Pretty much exactly how I would draw a tree (my drawing skills are terrible)

本【ほん】 – root; book
The Kanji itself means root. As you can see it’s a tree with a line on the trunk bottom to emphasis a root. It’s also the word for book as in “books are the root of all knowledge”. Quaint, ain’t it?

日本【に・ほん】 – Japan
Root of the sun, you know, the “Land of the Rising Sun”? It would be pretty hot over there if it were really the case.

言う【い・う】 – to say
言 is like four lines of dialogue or sound waves on top of a mouth (notice the first top stroke is slanted). Easy!

語【ご】 – language
Combine the radicals for “say”, “five” and “mouth” and you get the single character for language. To say with five mouths, I guess it kinda makes sense. It’s not a word by itself but you can just tack it onto countries to describe that country’s language such as スペイン語 = Spanish. Cool!

日本語【に・ほん・ご】 – Japanese (language)
Just tack on the character for language to the word for Japan to get Japanese as mentioned above.

Ok, let’s make a sentence with KANJI!

これは日本語でなんと言いますか？
What is this called in Japanese?
lit: As for this, what do you say in Japanese?

Replace これ with whatever you want to know the Japanese word for.

Hopefully this will give you an idea of how to make up mnemonics for memorizing Kanji.

MAKE SURE to practice after checking the stroke order which you can see here:
http://jisho.org/kanji/details/口五日木本言語

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I know I keep saying we’re done with Hiragana only to have another lesson with more sounds in Hiragana. Well, we’re almost done with learning all the sounds in Hiragana. In this lesson, we’re going to learn how to attach a /y/ vowel sound to another consonant and how to make a double consonant sound. Once more lesson after this, and we will be done with Hiragana!

Reading Practice

Here’s a list of random vocabulary you should read over for some simple reading practice. Once again, don’t worry about memorizing the definitions.

1. いしゃ – doctor
2. おちゃ – tea
3. りょくちゃ – green tea
4. にんじゃ – ninja
5. しゅと – capital (city)
6. しゃしん – photograph
7. まっちゃ – (ceremonial) green tea
8. しっぽ – tail
9. じゃっかん – slightly
10. ざっし – magazine
11. もっと – more
12. けっちゃく – conclusion

Related posts:

1. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.6 – y/w sounds If you’re new to this series, check out my previous...
2. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.4 – t/n sounds If you’re new to this series, check out my previous...
3. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.5 – h/m sounds If you’re new to this series, check out my previous...

So actually, while we learned all the Hiragana characters, there’s still more sounds to be learned using the same Hiragana characters we’ve already learned. In this lesson, we’re going to be learning the voiced consonants, which are indicated by two small lines or circle (only for /p/ sounds) in the upper-right of the character. There are five voiced consonant sounds: /g/, /z/, /d/, /b/, and /p/.

On computers or other digital displays, a small font can make it hard to distinguish between the lines and small circle (ex: 「ば／ぱ」) so make sure to increase the font if you’re having trouble seeing the circle. You can easily do this in your browser by using the “Zoom” functionality in the “View” menu.

Sounds to watch for

Learning to read and write these sounds is not very hard since you’ve already learned the characters. The pronunciations are pretty much what you would expect except for: 「じ」 and 「ぢ」. Both are pronounced “ji”. 「ぢ」 is very rarely used and normally only in voiced Kanji readings which we will learn about later so you’ll see 「じ」 more often than not for “ji”. 「づ」 is also usually only used as a voiced Kanji reading of 「つ」. It sounds almost identical to 「ず」 except for a slight press of the tongue to the roof of your mouth for a faint “d” sound at the beginning. It should sound like “dzu”.

Reading Practice

Here’s a list of random vocabulary you should read over for some simple reading practice. Once again, don’t worry about memorizing the definitions.

1. ご – five
2. ふじさん – Mt. Fuji
3. はなぢ – nosebleed
4. ひづけ – (calendar) date
5. にぎりずし – nigiri sushi
6. びじん – beautiful person
7. ともだち – friend
8. ざぶとん – cushion
9. ぱん – bread
10. じかん – time
11. おんど – temperature
12. つぎ – next
13. かばん – bag
14. おんがく – music
15. ぴあの – piano
16. うで – arm
17. おび – belt
18. かぐ – furniture
19. ちず – map
20. ぷりん – pudding
21. かぞく – family
22. みず – water
23. おぺら – opera
24. かぜ – wind
25. かげ – shadow
26. ぼく – me;myself;I (masculine)
27. いべんと – event
28. ばれんたいん – valentine
29. ぽけもん – Pokemon

Also check out my page on Hiragana.
My Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/taekimjapanese

Related posts:

1. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.6 – y/w sounds If you’re new to this series, check out my previous...
2. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.5 – h/m sounds If you’re new to this series, check out my previous...
3. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.4 – t/n sounds If you’re new to this series, check out my previous...

In this lesson, we will learn how to read and write the remaining Hiragana characters.

Sounds to watch for

The /r/ sound is notoriously difficult for English speakers. It is a hard sound between “r” and “l”. You want to make sure that you flick your tongue against the roof of your mouth, similar to how Spanish speakers roll their r’s.

The last few sounds don’t really follow the convention that we’re used to. There is no “yi”, “ye”, “wi”, “wu”, or “we” sounds.* And while 「を」 technically is a “wo” sound, it sounds exactly the same as “o” （お） in practice. As you’ll later learn, 「を」 is only used for grammatical purposes and not as part of regular words. Therefore, it will not show up in the reading practice below.

Finally, as the only consonant-only sound, 「ん」 is an curious anomaly. It comes after another sound to add a “n” or “m” consonant sound. I find that if you always pronounce it as “n”, nobody really notices the difference.

Reading Practice

Here’s a list of other vocab you should read over for some simple reading practice. Once again, don’t worry about memorizing the definitions.

1. そら – sky
2. やま – mountain
3. しろ – white
4. ゆき – snow
5. よる – night
6. りす – squirrel
7. おふろ – bath
8. わたし – me, myself, I
9. さん – three
10. よん – four
11. ふとん – futon
12. ゆめ – dream
13. みらい – future
14. むり – impossible
15. みる – to see
16. れんこん – lotus root (used in Japanese cooking)

Congratulations, you’ve learned all of Hiragana! We’re almost done with all the sounds in Japanese. Review the complete Hiragana chart here.
My Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/taekimjapanese

*Classical Japanese does have “wi” （ゐ） and “we” （ゑ） but they are no longer used.

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3. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.3 – k/s sounds If you’re new to this series, check out my previous...

In this lesson, we learn how to read and write the /h/ and /m/ consonant sounds in Hiragana.

Sounds to watch for

Most of the sounds in this section are exactly how you would expect except for 「ふ」, which is a weird sound somewhere between “who” and “fu”. Basically, your mouth when pronouncing “who” (as in “Doctor Who”) is an open circle while “fu” (as in “kung fu”) is completely closed with your top teeth touching your bottom lip. However, 「ふ」 lies directly in between the two sounds almost as if you’re trying to pronounce both at the same time. In practice, probably nobody will really notice anything wrong if you pronounce it as just “fu”. Incidentally, this is the sound for words like “Fuji” and “futon” so obviously we hear it as “fu” and not “hu”.

Reading Practice

Here’s a list of other vocab you should read over for some simple reading practice. Once again, don’t worry about memorizing the definitions.

1. ふく – clothes
2. はこ – box
3. ほし – star
4. ふた – lid
5. へい – soldier
6. ひく – to pull
7. ふえ – flute
8. へた – unskillful
9. め – eye
10. うみ – sea
11. のむ – to drink
12. きもの – kimono
13. いま - now
14. まめ – bean
15. みみ – ear
16. かも – duck

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3. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.2 – Hiragana Vowels If you’re new to this series, check out my previous...

In this lesson, we learn how to write the /t/ and /n/ consonant sounds in Hiragana.

The best way to practice writing is to use plain old-fashion pen and paper. You can download the Hiragana practice writing sheet here:
http://japanese-lesson.com/characters/hiragana/hiragana_writing.html

Sounds to watch for

Japanese doesn’t necessarily follow how we would normally expect consonant and vowel combinations to sound like. While most are pronounced how you would expect, 「ち」 is actually pronounced “chi” (instead of “tee”). Another very tricky sound for English speaker is 「つ」 which is a sound that really has no equivalent in English. To pronounce 「つ」 (“tsu”), try forming an “o” with your mouth as if you’re pronouncing “sue” and add a hard “t” sound at the start of the sound by touching your tongue to the back of your teeth.

It is often difficult at first to distinguish between 「す」 and 「つ」. The word for “moon” and the adjective for liking something is often used as an example. I got the sample audio files below from forvo.com. Can you notice the hard “t” sound that’s only in the first clip?

• つき – moon
• すき – likable

Reading Practice

Admittedly, learning random vocabulary is not very useful but it is good reading practice so do read over the list below but don’t worry about memorizing the definitions.

1. いち – one
2. て – hand
3. たつ – to stand
4. たこ – octopus
5. かつ – to win
6. に – two
7. なに – what
8. ぬの – fabric
9. すな – sand
10. おかね – money
11. しぬ – to die
12. ぬく – to extract, to pull out

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In this lesson, we learn the next two columns in the Hiragana chart: the /k/ and /s/ sounds.

Have you noticed that the new sounds have the same vowels we just learned in the last segment? As we learn more of Hiragana, we simply add a new consonant with the 5 vowels we already learned.

Handwritten vs type

The best way to practice writing is to use plain old-fashion pen and paper. You can download the Hiragana practice writing sheet here:
http://japanese-lesson.com/characters/hiragana/hiragana_writing.html

Just like how we would never write “a” by hand how it looks in a computer font, some Hiragana characters are not written they way they look typed on a computer.

1. If you compare the Hiragana for “ki” and “sa” below with the version in the practice sheet, you’ll notice that there’s a gap in the handwritten version not in the typed version.
   き versus

   さ vs

2. 「せ」 is also not usually written with such a large hook in the second stroke as it displayed by most computer fonts. In fact, many (including myself) write it with no hook at all.
   せ vs
3. 「そ」 is fine written exactly the way it looks typed. However, you can also decide to write the first stroke differently as shown below, making it two strokes。
   そ vs

There’s no single “correct” way to write these characters and often depends on personal preference. Keep an eye out for these discrepancies and go with what works best for you.

Sushi and other tidbits

Now you know how to write “sushi” in Hiragana: 「すし」. However, in Japanese, it is usually called 「おすし」. 「お」 is an honorific prefix that is used before certain words such as “money” or “store”. I’m not really sure why. Another thing you may often see in sushi restaurants is 「しそ」, that green leaf used for decoration that I personally never eat.

Reading Practice

So what kind of words can you say with /k/? How about romantic love? While 「あい」 is a very deep kind of love nurtured with time and effort, 「こい」 describes more of a romantic, exciting, or infatuation type of love. The same word is also used for “koi” fish, of course! If you ever go to a fancy Japanese restaurant that has a koi pond, you should say, “You know, these fish are called 「こい」 in Japanese.” They probably already knew that but they would be impressed if only they could see that you said it in Hiragana.

Speaking of homophones, the word 「かき」 has over 10 different meanings including “oyster” and “persimmon”. Those two can be particularly difficult to sort out in a conversation since they’re both edible. Because Japanese has many homophones, most of these words are written in Kanji or Chinese characters. But we still use Hiragana to describe how the Kanji is read or pronounced. Don’t worry, we’ll get to it all soon enough.

Here are some other words for additional reading practice using the /k/ and /s/ sounds.

1. あか – red
2. いけ – lake
3. いく – to go
4. かく – to write
5. あし – foot; leg
6. あさ – morning
7. いす – chair
8. かさ – umbrella
9. あせ – sweat
10. うそ – lie
11. （お）すし – sushi
12. せかい – world

With 「あか」, we now know 2 of the 3 traffic light colors. And unlike green/blue, they do use “red” for red light in Japan (and yellow). Here’s a random, scandalous tidbit: in Japanese, the verb 「いく」 is used for orgasms instead of “to come”, basically the opposite of English. But I wouldn’t recommend practicing this!

Um, anyway, why don’t you play around with this cool koi flash thingamajig and feed the fish. Until next time!

Bored with feeding the fish? Check out my page on Hiragana.

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2. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.1 – Writing Systems I am trying out a new series called “Japanese from...

The best way to practice writing is to use plain old-fashion pen and paper. You can download the Hiragana practice writing sheet here:
http://japanese-lesson.com/characters/hiragana/hiragana_writing.html

Here are the example words from the lesson with some additions for extra reading practice.

1. あい – love
2. あお – blue
3. いえ – house
4. うえ – above
5. おい – nephew
6. おう – to chase
7. あう – to meet

Here’s a odd tidbit. Did you know what we call “green” for a green traffic light is called 「あお」 in Japan? Actually, it IS kind of blue in Japan depending on how you look at it so it’s not that strange.

The sound 「おう」 is also an interjection used to express an “informal affirmative response“. So next time somebody says, “Let’s do it!” You can respond 「おう！」 instead of “yeah!”. Practicing interjections in Japanese is a great way to start sounding and maybe even feeling a bit more Japanese.

Hungry for more? Check out my page on Hiragana.
My Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/taekimjapanese

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1. Japanese from Scratch 1.1.1 – Writing Systems I am trying out a new series called “Japanese from...

I am trying out a new series called “Japanese from Scratch” by making videos that go over Japanese in small steps in a quick, no-nonsense fashion. In this first video, I do a brief overview of the 3 writing systems in Japanese to give you some context before jumping straight into Hiragana. Post your questions, suggestions, and feedback here or on the video page for future videos.

My Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/taekimjapanese

*I will be updating and re-posting the old posts in this category as I make the videos.

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1. これ – this
2. それ – that
3. あれ – that (over there)
4. どれ – which
5. ここ – here
6. そこ – there
7. あそこ – over there
8. どこ – where

Most will also probably learn the shortened version of 「これの」 etc. such as 「この」. And that’s usually about all that’s ever covered even though there’s a bunch more 「こ」、「そ」、「あ」 vocabulary that are really useful! So let’s look at a few.

Like this/that

You know how you’re not supposed to use the word “like” all the time. Well, we all do anyway because it’s so useful, right? The 「こう、そう、ああ」 series of words are arguably just as useful.

If somebody asks you how to do something, one common answer is “do it like this or that” and that’s exactly what 「こう、そう、ああ」 means. Now you see where 「そうです」 comes from.

A: この漢字はどう書くんですか？
A: How do you write this Kanji?

B: こう書きます。
B: You write it like this.

The real power from these words come when you combine them with 「いう」 to define what something is like. The English equivalent would be “this/that kind of thing”. It’s a great way to talk about abstract or complicated matters.

Examples

1. そういう難しい話は、よくわかんないよ。
   I don’t understand that kind of difficult talk (topic).
2. こういう時には、本当に何もする気がないんだよな。
   Really don’t feel like doing anything in times like these.

You can extend this further by attaching 「風」 (pronounced 「ふう」 in this case), to describe a certain way of doing things.

1. この漢字はこういう風に書くのよ。
   You write this Kanji in this kind of style/manner.

This/that much?

Another incredibly useful series of words are: 「こんな、そんな、あんな」. Combined with the 「に」 particle, these words will allow you to say common things like “Are you that hungry?” or “Did you have to buy this much?”. You can also use them without the 「に」 particle but the meaning is a bit hard to explain and is not used as often (in my opinion).

Examples

1. そんなにお腹が空いているの？
   Are you that hungry?
2. こんなにたくさん買う必要があったの？
   Did you have to buy this much?

Comparison

If you’ve learned the grammar for comparisons, you are probably already familiar with the phrase 「どちらの方が」. This literally means “which way” which you can obviously answer with “this or that way”. It can also be used for plain directions as well, of course.

1. こちら – this
2. そちら – that
3. あちら – that (over there)

Etc

There are others like 「こいつ、そいつ、あいつ」 that I’m not going to discuss here. I don’t want to be accused of corrupting the pure and proper Japanese that is taught in most classes.

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