The Dojo – martial art, zen

Last Monday it was the last lesson in Japanese for this year. Now we have a break in the course to January next year.

But to learn a language, and especially Japanese, I have to continue and repeating almost every day.

This is the last words we worked with in the course:

kazoku – family
nani – what
arimasu – be, exist
o-tera – buddhist temple
jinja – Shinto shrine
ii desu ne – that´s nice
taki – waterfall
soba-ya – buckewheat noddle shop
asoko – over there

We also practise to count floors in a house, or parts of a build

ikkai – first floor
ni-kai – second floor
san-gai – third floor
yon-kai – forth floor
go-kai – fifth floor
rokkai – sixth floor

A useful word also is: o-tearai – that is toilet

Andra bloggar om: japanska, språk

To write in Japanese is as science for itself.

There are three kinds om Japanese writing:
1. Kanji: Chinese characters or ideographs, each conveying an idea, most of which have at least two readings.

2. Hiragana: A phonetic syllabary. The symbols are curvalinear in style.

3. Katakana: The second syllabary used primarily for foreign names and place names and words of foreign origin. The symbols are made up of straight lines.

Written Japanese normally makes use of all three.

Besides these three forms of writing, Japanese is sometimes written in romaji – that is Roman letters – particularly for the convenience of foreigners. In my schoolbook for my studies in Japanese romaji is used. If not we could not learn at all, I suppose.

Now, after three seasons of studies I think I can use hiragana. I have started with mot katakana and some kanjis now.

Here is some homepages I found about kanji:
The kanji-site

Omniglot – a very nice site about kanji.

A guide to the Japanese Writing System, of Kanji Dictionary Publishing Society

A lot about Japanese language you can find at The Japanese Page.com

Here I found a site where you can download a free flashprogram – The Kani Gold – for exercises in writing of kanji. I have not tried it myself yet.
The Kanji Gold computer program was written by Dr. Denton Hewgill, a mathematics professor by trade, who has an interest in the Japanese martial arts, Kendo and Iaido.

Here you can get your name in Japanese.

Here a brilliant man teaching us some kanjisigns in a video I found at YouTube:

Here a video about Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana:

Short summary in Swedish:
Liten kort summering på svensk:
Japanskan har tre olika alfabet, eller sätt att skriva på.
1. Kanji som är importerat från kinesiska, där varje tecken har en betydelse.
2. Hiragana, där varje tecken betyder ett ljud, ett ljud som består av en konsonant och vokal.
3. Katakana, ljudbundna tecken precis som Hiragana, fast används för låneord från speciellt västerländska ord.
I skriven japanska används ofta alla tre sättet blandat.

I inlägget finns också länkar till några bra ställen med god information om japanska skrivtecken.

Andra bloggar om: japanska, Japan, språk

Now we are working with positions in our Japanese language-course.

Positions – in the meaning of prepositions. Some of this words are rather wellknown for Karate-people. I think for example about the words mae and ushiro.

But, there is a big different. In Japanese these words are not prepositions in the meaning we use prepositions in languages as English and Swedish. These words in Japanese are nouns. They are used together with a kind of part of sentences the Japanese call particle, a part of sentence we dont use in Swedish.

This are the nouns for positions we are working with now in the Japanese course:

ue – top, above
shita – bottom
mae – front
ushiro – back, behind
naka – inside, middle
tonari – next to
chikaku – vicinity, nearby

If I want to say there is a flower at the table I say:
Teeburu no ue ni hana ga arimasu.

Teeburu – that is table
So what that sentence says is: On the top of the table there is a flower.

Kaban is the word for briefcase. Hon is the word for book.
If I want to say in Japanese: There is a book in the briefcase – I say:
Kaban no naka ni hon ga arimasu.

Arimasu is the word for is, while talking about non-living things.

If I would say there is a dog (inu) on the table is use the word imasu:

Teeburu no ue ni inu ga imasu.

Ga is a special kind of word also. I dont know how to explain that right now.

I will came back about that word later on.

I have realised that to learn Japanese is sort of the same thing as learing Karate.

When one of my classmates in the Japanese class is also very skilled in Karate. Sometimes he says it is difficult to understand some parts of the Japanese language. I say to him: it is as to practise a kata in Karate, just do it again and again. You dont need to understand it all from beginning.

Andra bloggar om: prepositioner, japanska