Japanese

Beginning to learn Japanese is no mere task. Knowing only of French, English and some Chinese leaned in high school, Chinese helps for kanji, but I still got to learn the kana alphabets : hiragana and katakana.

For know, I am using a PDF of Minna no nihongo Shokyu (volume I, 2nd Edition), so I’ll try this manual. It seems a bit steep, so I also got a PDF of the minna-no-nihongo-I tanslation and grammatical notes on hand.

It’s an image PDF so I can’t copy and paste to help.

The manual “Premier cahier des Kana” from the French INALCO Japan Department (2014) found online help with roman ji prononciation.

My father lend me the manual (japanese-for-busy-people volume I)[https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671267/japanese-for-busy-people-i-by-ajalt/] so I will learn from it the first lessons.

It is the version where you don’t learn the hiragana, katakana or kanji first : you learn with the romaji translitteration first.

I don’t like this idea much as I tend to do some easy prononciation mistakes because of it. Still, learning the basis without the burden of the writting system is interesting as it allows to rapidly undersand a dialogue.

Following are some notes of different origins. If you see any errors or mistakes please report them !

Kanji references

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gakush%C5%AB_kanji

First lesson

こんにちは Konnichiwa : hello bonjour

kon : jour i : particule du sujet du propos wa : particule de la cible target. Voir lesson spécifique. katakana ha prononcé wa dans cette situation. Utilier wo ou ha pour le clavier wozc

こんにちわ　今一話

XはYです

X i Y desu X au sujet de Y est/être.

僕はあサチャです。 bokuwa sacha desu

boku = watashi in more masculine version je suis / about me

です desu : to be, is.

バナナは甘いです。

今日は土曜日です。 Kyō wa doyōbi desu. Aujourd’hui, c’est samedi. Today is Saterday

今　now

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BB%8A

  • On’yomi : コン (kon), キン (kin), ケ (ke)
  • Kun’yomi : いま (ima), な* (na)
  • Sens général : maintenant

今日 kyō : aujourd’hui 今晩 konban : ce soir 今朝 kesa : ce matin 今週 konshū : cette semaine 今月 kongetsu : ce mois 今年 kotoshi : cette année 今夜 kon’ya : cette nuit 今回 konkai : cette fois-ci 今度 kondo : cette fois-ci 今後 kongo : désormais, à partir de maintenant 今時 nowadays

the Japanese question marker か

the の particle as possessive

Learning with songs

I’ve been wanting to learn from classic culture and songs.

I have discovered this site and this song https://www.japanese-song.com/kojo-no-tsuki/ and even tho it is too difficult for me yet I feel it’s good practice to learn from songs ; as I did from the beatles or songs when learning English.

The choice of songs, I can’t comment. The vocabulary is explained in a clear concise maner and the somewhat culturally important aspects are evoked. I really enjoy it.