background preloader

Language

Facebook Twitter

Japanese Grammar Guide | Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese. This guide was created as a resource for those who want to learn Japanese grammar in a rational, intuitive way that makes sense in Japanese. The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view. Before you begin If your computer is not setup to display Japanese, you’ll want to enable Japanese support to read the Japanese text. Other formats Paperback – Available on Amazon.PDF Version – Philipp Kerling wrote an awesome script to convert the site to PDF.iOS app – The guide is now available for iOS devices created by Adam Critchley.Android app – The guide is now available on Google Play created by Ignatius Reza Lesmana.

This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License. The problem with conventional textbooks The problem with conventional textbooks is that they often have the following goals. A Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar Suggestions. How to Read Japanese - Lesson#1 - Introduction: Three types of characters. Japanese Grammar/Expressions Lessons. Vocabulary : Useful and common Japanese phrases. Common Japanese Words. Words are the building blocks of language. In order to have any type of conversation in Japanese, you will need to know a certain amount of Japanese words. The more Japanese words you know, the more you will be able to communicate.

However, it’s not just the number of Japanese words that’s important, but also which ones. When most people think of learning the Japanese language, they think of the years of hard work they will need to put in. The majority of people consider this hard work and the amount of time it will take to reach fluency, and decide it’s impossible. The Japanese language has hundreds of thousands of words, but it is only a small fraction of those words that makes up the majority of both the spoken and written language. The key is too choose the right materials. Below I have created a short list of some of the most common and most helpful Japanese words. You can also find a much larger list containing 1000+ Japanese words in a downloadable pdf format at the below link.

Japanese Alphabet. Japanese Alphabet The Japanese alphabet is usually referred to as kana, specifically hiragana and katakana. While the Hiragana consists of 48 syllables, it is a phonetic alphabet where each alphabetic combination represents just a single sound. Thus any Japanese word can be written in a way that can be read without having to remember how the word is pronounced. So the Japanese kana are much simpler, the way something is written is the way it sounds. There is also Kanji, a Japanese system of writing based on borrowed or slightly modified Chinese characters.

Hiragana Syllables (Alphabet) The table below shows the 48 Hiragana syllables: Maybe you have noticed that many sounds are missing, that’s why Japanese added some additional sounds using diacritics or combinations of syllables, the table below shows the additional sounds in Hiragana: Katakana Syllables (Alphabet) Kanji Characters (Alphabet)