Since quarter break, my life is back to that of a 大学生 (dai-gaku-sei) (college student). Which means it has been very boring. With nothing else to really blog about, I'll give you guys a Japanese lesson!
How about Kanji?
Some Kanji are more fun to write than others.
楽しい tanoshii is tanoshii to write. (FUN!) It looks like cute fireworks over a tree.
難しい muzukashii is muzukashii to write. (DIFFICULT!) It looks like something I don't want to write.
I posted this picture before, but this is also what you can do with kanji! I wrote the kanji for love. It's fun, beautiful and is much harder than it looks.
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| Calligraphy |
Other ways to write:
カタカナ(Katakana)： Used for foreign words! Such as place names. ボストン（Boston). Or, as I found out recently... it's also used as italics. Vice versa with hiragana
ひらがな(Hiragana)： The basic alphabet. Kanji can be made from hiragana. Why not use all kanji? Well, hiragana is also used for verb tenses (such as -ed or -ing, in English). They are used for particles (at, in, the, in English) and for other words.
Pronunciation.
Every syllable is said, basically.
A: Ah (as in the Bostonian way to say CAR).
I: E (as in, EEK!)
U: OO (as in, OOPS!)
E: Aye (as in, HEY!)
O: Oh (as in, Oh crap I left the oven on.)
Time to banish those words often mispronounced in America:
Sake (the alcoholic drink of Japan). This is NOT pronounced Saw-KEY. It's Saw-Kaye.
Karaoke is the same way. The e at the end is an AYE not an EE.
It seems intimidating. Grammatically, Japanese is not like English. But it is a fun and rewarding language to learn. It's a challenge, I won't lie, but if you are interested, please do your best to learn! You won't regret it!
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