Japanese Lessons: Part 6

Lesson 1: hiragana
Lesson 2: katakana
Lesson 3: more kana
Lesson 4: grammar intro
Lesson 5: kanji
Lesson 5½: more kanji


This here is another kanji lesson. Sort of. It's more of a vocabulary/kanji lesson so you can learn to recognize a few helpful words. When necessary I'll include some other bits of grammar.

Let me first reacquaint you with some friends from previous posts. This time I'm also including some vocab that uses the words so you can see kanji in action, so to speak.

女: ジョ、ニョ、ニョウ、おんな、め "woman"
JO, NYO, NYOU, onna, me男: ダン、ナン、おとこ、お "man"
DAN, NAN, otoko, o
一: イチ、イツ、ひと、ひと.つ "one"
ICHI, ITSU, hito, hito.tsu
日: ニチ、ジツ、ひ、び、か "day; sun"
NICHI, JITSU, hi, bi, ka
本: ホン、もと "book; origin; real"
HON, moto
口: コウ、ク、くち "mouth"
KOU, KU, kuchi

入: ニュウ、ジュ、い.る、い.れる、はい.る "enter"
NYUU, JU, i.ru, i.reru, hai.ru

出: シュツ、スイ、で.る、だ.す "exit"
SHUTSU, SUI, de.ru, da.su

So that's a little sample of vocab. On some of them you can see quite clearly where the vocab terms come from, like on this one:

女: ジョ、ニョ、ニョウ、おんな、め "woman"
JO, NYO, NYOU, onna, meSo when you see this kanji standing by itself you know it's going to be pronounced おんな and not by the other pronunciations. Others are not so clear to see where the come from and these need a little bit of explanation. Take this example:

入: ニュウ、ジュ、い.る、い.れる、はい.る "enter"
NYUU, JU, i.ru, i.reru, hai.ru
口: コウ、ク、くち "mouth"
KOU, KU, kuchiOur vocab term is いりぐち (iriguchi), but if you look you don't see all of those pieces in the two kanji used to write it. You do, however, see parts of it. The kanji 入 has one reading of い.る (i.ru) which is not that different from いり (iri), and くち (kuchi) is a lot like ぐち (guchi). The similarities are of course important.

If you can remember back, when you see a reading with a period (.) in it that means you write the ending of the kanji with hiragana. So with い.る (i.ru) you would write it:


One thing we're often allowed to do in Japanese with these kind of kanji is change the ending when the ending is in hiragana. Don't worry about how or why, just know that it happens. So we'll change the ending from る [ru] to the related り [ri]. Also know that the pronunciation at the beginning of these kanji do not change this way, only the parts at the end.

The other thing we can do is change the second kanji in a two-kanji pair. The difference between くち (kuchi) and ぐち (guchi) are those two little lines the differentiate く [ku] from ぐ [gu]. When your second kanji begins with a sound (like "ku") that has another kana which is basically that kana plus the two lines (like "gu") it may sometimes change. [Linguistically we're only voicing unvoiced syllables, similar to how "cats" has an "s" sound and "dogs" has a "z" sound.] So! We end up with this explanation:

入: ニュウ、ジュ、い.る、い.れる、はい.る "enter"
NYUU, JU, i.ru, i.reru, hai.ru
口: コウ、ク、くち "mouth"
KOU, KU, kuchiSince we're mashing two kanji together, in this instance, we "hide" the り and instead of writing 入り口 (which is technically okay to use) we write 入口.

Sometimes there are irregularities and exceptions, but for the most part you can just follow the pronunciations. Since a lot of kanji have multiple pronunciations you have to do a bit of memorization in the first place so memorizing irregular ones shouldn't be too much extra work.


So let me give you a vocab list to go over.

女【おんな】(onna): woman
男【おとこ】(otoko): man
一日【いちにち】(ichinichi): one day
日本【にほん】(nihon): Japan
日よう日【にちようび】(nichiyoubi): Sunday
本【ほん】(hon): book
口【くち】(kuchi): mouth
出口【でぐち】(deguchi): exit
入口【いりくち】(iriguchi): entrance
ペン (pen): pen
えんぴつ (enpitsu): pencil
たべもの (tabemono): food
のみもの (nomimono): drink, beverage
ビール (biiru): beer
おちゃ (ocha): tea
水 【みず】(mizu): water
ピザ (piza): pizza
ラーメン (raamen): ramen
車【くるま】 (kuruma): car
ひこうき (hikouki): airplane
けいたい (keitai): cell phone, mobile phone
学校【がっこう】(gakkou): school
かぞく (kazoku): family, family member
えいが (eiga): movies, film


Let me end with one more piece of grammar. This will be something you'll find useful when people ask you to say a few things about yourself.


If you're already talking about yourself you can also shorten it to:


And if you can remember what the whole sentence you can even get away with just this:


You can put almost anything into this sentence: an object, place, or thing (where you're stating a preference) or a person (where you imply quite a lot more!). [What you can't do is use a verb. So no "I like to swim." At least not with this type of sentence.]

Give it a try.

I'm just bookmarking all these for after I finish my exams. They're going to be sooooo useful to rejig the ol' memory!

I think you should start on the numbering systems next...just sayin'

Japanese Language Classes in Pune helps you in fluency in Japanese language speech can't just assist an individual in procuring a career opportunity as a translator with business or embassies but also in something as creative as writing.