ひらがなーHIRAGANA

Hiragana is one of the main building blocks of Japanese and is usually the first alphabet which beginners learn. Hiragana is bigger than the English alphabet, but it has an easily followable pattern. Take a look at the guides below and test yourself with the quizzes. If you'd like more resources as well as resources for Katakana and Kanji, don't forget to visit our dedicated KANA (which means all alphabets) page.

Question Words

In Japanese the question words are dare(who) nani(what) itsu(when) doko(where) doushite or naze (why) and douyatte(how). When you make a sentence, you can add the particle KA at the end to make a statement a question. To learn more about questions, see one of the below links.

Word Order In Japanese

Japanese word order is different from word order in English. In English we start off with the subject (I, you, he/she, they), say what we are going to do with a verb (go, eat, buy) and finally include the object of the verb (to school, fried chicken, a new car). We can call this SVO word order (S-ubject, V-erb, O-bject). Japanese has an SOV word order. As you'd expect, the subject (which can sometimes be omitted) is first, followed by the object of the sentence and finally the verb. In Japanese WATASHI WA GINKOU NI IKIMASU is actually more like "I to the bank go" more than "I go to the bank" if you think about it literally. For more information on word order, see the links below.

Basic Vocabulary and Stories

This course builds vocabulary through stories. Please see our google classroom and your work package for the full list of stories. Here are some links to websites which can also help you build up your vocabulary in different ways. 

Greetings in Japanese

Most people are familliar with the word "Konnichiwa" (hello), but there's actually a lot of set phrases in Japanese for the different times of the day and situations. Before you eat a delicious meal, it is good to say "Itadakimasu" and when you finish your meal, you can say "gochisousama deshita". Learn more of these kinds of phrses with the below links. 

Days of the Week

The days of week in Japanese all end with ~YOUBI (day) and there's a saying starting from Sunday, "Nichi getsu ka sui moku kin do" and each of these represent the different days of the week. Nichiyoubi (Sunday) has a sun Kanji and literally means "sun day". Getsuyoubi (Monday) has a moon and means "moon day". Kayoubi ( Tuesday) has the symbol for fire and means "fire day". Suiyoubi (Wednesday) has the symbol for water and means "water day". Mokuyoubi (Thursday) has the symbol for tree and means "tree day". Kinyoubi(Friday) symbol of gold, making it "gold day" in Japanese. Finally, Doyoubi(Saturday) means "earth day" since its character means the earth or soil. 

Numbers in Japanese

Numbers in Japanese are both easy and challenging, depending on how you look at it. It is easy to learn how to count to 10 or 100 because it uses an intuitive system that is easy to follow. This is the basic numbering system and the one which will be learned in Japanese 9: Ichi(1), ni(2), san(3), shi or yon(4), go(5), roku(6), nana or shichi(7), hachi(8), kyuu or ku(9), and juu(10). From there you just keep on going on. 23 is ni-juu-san (or two 10's and 3). 57 is go-juu-nana (or 5 10's and 7). We'll leave the other numbering system for now, but just know that you'll learn it later on for counting different kinds of objects. If you use these numbers, people will understand just fine.

Months and Hours

In order to make the month or the hour, you just add a specific character after the number. ~GATSU(month) is used with ICHIGATSU(January) being the first month and JUUNIGATSU(December) being the last month. You just count in Japanese to see which month it is. For the hours of the day the character you use is ~JI(hour). You can use 12 or 24 hour time, but in Japan it is common to see things displayed in 24 hour time. JUUSANJI (1pm) is the 13th hour or 1pm.  After the hour you can use HAN (half) to mean "and a half": JUUSANJIHAN(1:30pm) or you can use the character ~FUN(minute) pronounced 'hoon': JUUSANJIJUUGOFUN(1:15pm). If you'd like to learn more about numbers, take a look below.

Adjectives (Polite Form)

In Japanese there's two main types of adjectives, い(I) adjectives and な(NA) adjectives. The biggest challenge here is that even though most of the adjectives are I adjectives, you need to know the difference between the two because they conjugate differently. Usually adjectives ending with I are I adjectives (ATSUI, ATARASHII, OISHII). Rarely there are characters that are actually NA Adjectives even though they end with I (KIREI). Learning the adjectives and how to conjugate them takes time, but there are some resources below to help.

い　I Adjectives

• i - present positive

• kunai - present negative

• katta - past positive

• kunakatta - past negative

な　NA Adjectives

• NA - present

• JANAI / JA ARIMASEN - present negative

• DESHITA - past

• JANAKATTA DESU - past negative

ARIMASU vs IMASU

When you say something exists in a place, it depends on the type of object. Living (animate) objects use the verb IMASU, while non-living (inanimate) objects use ARIMASU.  Please see below for more details.

MASU Verbs (Polite Form)

MASU verbs are the standard polite version of a verb which you'd often see first in a textbook. These verbs are easy to conjugate and a great way to jump into Japanese. In Anime and in daily life, you'll often see Japanese people speak in casual form, but it can be rude to speak casually to people when you're meeting them for the first time, so that's why MASU is taught first.

• MASU (present positive)

• MASEN (present negative)

• MASHITA (past positive - see below)

• MASENDESHITA (past negative - see below)

Japanese Particles

Particles in Japanese are special characters that take a little while to get used to, but they mark parts of the sentence, such as the topic, the place a person is going to, or say that the sentence is a question. Take a look below and then further resources for more! 

• WA / GA - topic and subject particles show where the topic or subject of a sentence are.

• NI - Location or time marker

• O (WO) - Direct object marker. This goes after the thing which is directly after the object and before the verb.

• KARA / MADE - From / to 

• KA - Question marker. Put at the end of a sentence to make a question.

• YO - Excalamation. Use to show emphasis. It is like an exclamation point! 

• NE - Isn't it. Ne at the end of a sentence is like saying "EH" and invites a response.

Adverbs of Frequency

Just like in English, there are many adverbs of frequency to share how often you do things. Most adverbs use positive form of a verb; however some of the less frequent adverbs of frequency such as META NI and ZENZEN take a verb in negative form. For example ITSUMO(always) ITSUMO BENKYOUSHIMASU (I always study) uses a positive verb, whereas ZENZEN(Never) ZENZEN BENKYOUSHIMASEN (I never study) is in the negative verb.

Prepositions of Place

Knowing how to say that there is something in a location is important. 

Giving Directions

Kowing words for directions in Japanese is useful if you go on a trip to Japan because you can ask how to go to a certain place and understand some key words for how to get there.