Kana Flashcards

I found a great site that does Kana flashcards.  I have found that writing the characters helps initially, but to drill them into my head, this program does the trick.  I'm going to put this link in my sidebar.

My Books are Here!

I ordered three books from Amazon and they finally arrived!  I got a book on learning Hiragana, a book that uses pictographs to show the Japanese characters and the sounds that they make--very helpful for remembering the sound that goes with the shape, and a text book that is written in English for the first two lessons and then goes to English instructions that are written in Japanese characters.  It will definitely make me able to read Japanese even if I can't yet understand what I'm reading.

Mom printed off a bunch of practice pages from the learning Hiragana and Katakana website and now I'm like a Kindergartner, saying "Ahh" and writing a line of  "A" and another line of "a".

Kana are Hiragana and Katakana

Kana is the basic writing system used to express the Japanese language in sounds.  It's not a traditional alphabet.  I learned that there are two basic types of kana: hiragana and katakana.  Hiragana is Japanese cursive and katakana is manuscript writing.  I've found great resources to drill these.  I'm planning on learning them in the next couple of weeks.  Then I will be ready to begin formal study.  Yea!

Japanese

I've been interested in the Japanese language, culture and country for a few years now and I've decided to undertake a study of the language.  This blog will be a place to collect my notes and tell of my progress.  I'll put helpful links in the sidebar.

Ways I'm starting to learn the language:

1) Believe it or not, YouTube videos in Japanese with English subtitles have helped the most so far.

2) I downloaded apps on my iPod touch and am using them to drill Japanese characters.  Also, I found a great Japanese dictionary app.

3) I've ordered a book titled, "Japanese for Everyone: A Functional Approach to Daily Communication" by Susumu Nagara  In order to use this book, I must first master the three basic Japanese alphabets: kana, hirangana and katankana.  The link in my sidebar titled "vocabulary" is where I am going to learn these.  I am hoping I can do this in a month so that I can start formal language study.