ようこそ！

Hello there! This is just a little site where I will post about my learning of the Japanese language. This web page is for me to quickly post things for my senior project, which is to learn basic Japanese. If you're interested in the language also, you might just learn a thing or two! Wish me luck!

Basic Sentence Structure

On July 11, 2010 at 3:50pm

In English, a normal sentence is structured: Subject-Verb-Object. In Japanese, it is Subject-Object-Verb. So if you have [I am Trisha] in English, it would be [私はトリシャです]1 in Japanese.

Let's take [I like cats]: [猫がすき]. The subject would be "I", but we left that out along with the subject marker "wa". That leaves "neko" to be the object and "ga" to be the object marker. Then we have "suki", which is the verb for "like". We could have added "desu", but like "I", it is not needed.

Today's vocabulary for myself (and you) will be basic objects and things I like/don't like, along with the hiragana and kanji for them.

1 Note that ha/は is used instead of wa/わ , although it is still pronounced "wa".

A Brief Explanation

On July 11, 2010 at 2:26pm

At my high school we have a required project we must complete in order to graduate. That project can be whatever we choose. Our sophomore year is when we prepare for it; brainstorming and such. Our junior year is when we write an eight to ten page report on the subject we've chosen. Finally, after we finish our report, we can start working on the final product, which basically shows off what we've been able to learn or whatever.

As you can plainly see, I chose to write about the Japanese language. My report included the history, origin, basic grammar structure, etc. of the language, so I learned quite a bit about this centuries-old language. Of course, my product is to learn to speak basic Japanese. I started around the second semester of my junior year, because there is no way I could learn it in one semester. So far I can form basic sentences and read all hiragana characters, some kanji, and some katakana. My next few goals are:

There's a lot more I'd like to do, but I'm trying to start off at a slow pace. Let's pray that I'll have until my second semester to present my product. I'm thinking of just making a speech (in Japanese) and a little portfolio. Yeah, I'm totally prepared. /sarcasm.