Do you know the Japanese language?

[Night Elf]

I've googled for this and am still a bit confused. Ds15 has chosen Japanese as his foreign language. I have to learn it along side him because he's not used to having to study in this manner.

 

There appear to be 3 alphabets: hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

 

We're learning characters from hiragana right now. So far we've been given: a, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su, se, so. Our vocabulary uses these characters, or do you call them sounds?

 

I understand that katakana is to be used when a foreign word, like an American word, cannot be properly translated into Japanese. But does this mean that the word that uses katakana will be inserted into a hiragana sentence? In other words, hiragana and katakana are used simultaneously?

 

And we're starting typing practice today which uses kanji. Where the heck did that come from?

 

Oops, I forgot there was a foreign language board. I'll cross-post it there too.

 

I am assuming we'll learn this as the course proceeds, but I feel like we've been thrown in without detailed explanation. I'm the kind of learner that needs to know WHY before I can do something. In fact, we're so confused that what the course considers to be one week's worth of work is taking us 3 weeks total. I sure hope we don't stay at this slow pace but I'm scared to move on if we don't have the foundation they are laying!

 

Anyway, here's to seeing if anyone can help. :)

Edited May 22, 2012 by Night Elf

[Remudamom]

No and bump

[Danestress]

Hiragana is an alphabet that you can think of as natively Japanese. Anything you could write in Kanji can also be written in Hiragana. Your son needs to know this cold. He needs to be able to reproduce any thing he hears in Japanese in hiragana. Practice, practice, practice.

 

Kanji were adopted from China during a time when there was a lot of back and forth between the two nations. But even with use of the Kanji, the Japanese needed hiragana in order to do things like conjugate verbs. So if you are reading a Japanese children's book about drinking tea, there will be a Kanji that means "drink" and hiragana will be used to indicate the tense of the drinking (let's drink tea, we drank tea, we are thinking about drinking tea). If the book were about drinking chocolate milk, though, there would be kanji for "drink" with hiragana to indicate things like verb tenses, and there would be katakana for "chocolate milk" (if they want to call it chocolate milk, which is likely in modern Japan, even though technically there is a Japanese word for cow's milk that would also have kanji).

 

So in a sentence saying that your son, Peter, drank milk, it might say "Pii taa (written in katakan) drank (written with a Kanji and the use of hiragana) chokoreeto miruku (written in hiragana)." Except that the sentence order would be different.

 

If you look at something written in Japanese - maybe a news paper, you will start to pick this out pretty easily - the use of kanji, hiragana and katakana. You will also notice that sometimes, even the Japanese need a little help with knowing how to pronounce a kanji character, and hiragana will be written in tiny characters alongside in order to tell the reader how that word is pronounced. This is especially true in materials written for young readers. Often for younger readers, word will be written in hiragana when the kanji would be beyond grade level.

 

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask me any questions!

Edited May 22, 2012 by Danestress

[Jean in Newcastle]

I speak Japanese fluently.

 

Danestress is correct.

 

Only one other point - the sounds in Japanese aren't technically an alphabet but are a syllabary. That just means that other than the initial a i u e o, the sounds are in the forms of syllables.

[Night Elf]

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask me any questions!

 

Eeek!! :lol: Thank you, I'll show him your answer. It does help, but it sure makes me feel like we might be in over our heads. I wanted to do Latin but since it's his course, I let him choose. Even he is feeling overwhelmed. I'm not sure how long to stick with it before admitting defeat. It's a Keystone course, online, and we can do it at our own pace. Their schedule is a 36-week schedule but we can stretch that out. I'm worried this one course will take us more than a year and we still need to do a second year. Oh my.

[elegantlion]

I don't know what course you're using, but we're quite happy with Irasshai. http://www.gpb.org/irasshai gpb has free videos and worksheets online. There are also texts and workbooks available on amazon. They introduce hiragana first, then katakana, then Kanji. It's a three year program, that we'll use over 4 years. The teacher is a hoot and it's been easy to follow although we're only on lesson 12

 

Even if you don't want to switch, you might supplement with the videos and worksheets.

Edited May 22, 2012 by elegantlion

[Miss Peregrine]

I don't know what course you're using, but we're quite happy with Irasshai. http://www.gpb.org/irasshai gpb has free videos and worksheets online. There are also texts and workbooks available on amazon. They introduce hiragana first, then katakana, then Kanji. It's a three year program, that we'll use over 4 years. The teacher is a hoot and it's been easy to follow although we're only on lesson 12

 

Even if you don't want to switch, you might supplement with the videos and worksheets.

 

I was going to suggest this, too. DD is doing fantastically with this program.

[Ibbygirl]

I don't know what course you're using, but we're quite happy with Irasshai. http://www.gpb.org/irasshai gpb has free videos and worksheets online. There are also texts and workbooks available on amazon. They introduce hiragana first, then katakana, then Kanji. It's a three year program, that we'll use over 4 years. The teacher is a hoot and it's been easy to follow although we're only on lesson 12

 

Even if you don't want to switch, you might supplement with the videos and worksheets.

 

Ooooh thank you for this! My dd wants to learn Japanese too! :)

[Miselainia]

:iagree: Knowing hiragana is the basis to progressing through Japanese writing.

 

You've got some great responses! I just wanted to address the WHY a bit.

Back in the day, women wrote in hiragana and men wrote in katakana. Both are derivatives of kanji.

 

Also, you may see katakana used like we use italics: for foreign words and for emphasis on words.

 

HTH

[Night Elf]

I appreciate all the responses. We just learned that ds15's teacher uses Skype to tutor students face to face. That is very cool. That might be the thing that keeps ds afloat in this class. DH and I had a talk with him yesterday about the seriousness of this class and that we expect him to put in as much work as is required. He isn't used to this type of course or the skills needed to learn the concepts. This class is going to be another turning point in his education which will be a good thing. A hard thing! but a good thing. :)