Japanese

Watashi no Kami-sama. Japanese ga stupido language wa. Shutu ze hell upu ga. Speaku engrish, baka dumbassu. HAI HAI.

Jesus.

Kare ha itsumo sou yu hen-na koto wo kaiteru. Ki ni shinaide, ne.

Sub-Sean,

I'd agree with Sho. First learn kana, vocab and grammar. Leave the Chinese characters till a little later but that's not to say "Forget about them altogether." They are useful and I think you'll benifit from learning some of the easier ones a couple of weeks into you studies.

For example, "sun", "moon", "fire", "water", "tree", "gold" and "earth (dirt)" are pretty easy to read and write and they are very useful because they correspond to the days of the week also "sun" and "moon" correspond to "day" and "month".

I am learning Japanese with an instructor(fluent in Japanese) who is from America but taught English in Japan. The grammar can be studied from books but good pronunciation will come from hearing it right the first time and repeating it with a teacher coaching you as you go. I have had a difficult time with the two writing systems but I was able to force them into my memory by making a chart with the A,I,U,E,O on top and the KA,SA,TA,NA,HA,YA,RA,
on the left side. A few sounds like TA have a similar DA sound made from the original symbol plus two small almost quote like symbols(") added these are trickey and attention must be played as far as their placement. This is how the Japanese look up words in their dictionaries with this sound order. For them a SA-A sound comes before a SA-I sound. In each square I wrote the english sound in one color(black),the hiragana script in another color(blue)and Katakana(red). This combining allows you to see all of the different symbols at the same place. You can use your imagination as to how you combine the symbols in the square,some flowing into each other,for instance the H in HA has a katakana roof like symbol over the H and this will help you not mix it up with another katakana H sounds. Buy books with hiragana and romanji script so that you can have survival phrases, one's that you will really use anyway on your own. There are several ways that they Romanize our sounds and it is confusing. You may have to transpose some of the writing to have it make sense to you(TI can be a Roman system for the sound CHI) If the person helping you traveling thru Japan is not sure what you are saying they can read the hiragana in your guide book. They have different rules for pitch but basically it is not so much of a rollercoaster as english is. The pitch and accents are a little more monotone, with the double vowels and consonants playing a role in making different words. BIIRU versus BIRU one is a beer one is a building.

There's the thing. If you only want a little Japanese so you can survive a trip to Japan, by all means get a book with romanised script. However, if you really want to learn the language, I stick to my guns: steer clear of romanised script, it'll slow you down.

In Japanese there are no spaces in between the words. How do you know where the words end and start?

Acquiring a vocabulary, I'd imagine.

that's right... this is why it's sometimes hard to tell where the words start and end particularly when everything is written in hiragana or katakana. you'll get used to it soon. David's right, when you have a certain amount of vocab, it's a lot easier.

Jim,
I agree with you 100%.

Usually when everything is written in kana it's a children's book. They usually put spaces in in this case. Otherwise you look for the patterns of hiragana, katakana and Chinese characters. These patterns indicate to the reader the grammatical structure of the text and hence the reader can tell where one word ends and another starts.

Let me add a little to my above post:

Romanised script will slow you down in the long run. Instead of Japanese script you'll be picturing romanised Japanese in your head whenever you hear words (new words, old words, any words).

Ha! ... Hi-hu! He-ho!

Another thing you've got to be careful of is "hu" which is also transliterated as "fu" as in "Fuji", "futon", "tofu". The Hepburn transliteration, "fu", can be a little misleading. Although [f] as in the English words "off", "food", etc. will do; the Japanese /f/ is actually a [P]*.

"Fu"/"hu" is actually not the odd one out in the "h" column at all. Coarticulation of the [h] with the [u] produces this [P]. This is slightly detectable in "ho" too, to a lesser degree but for a similar reason.

If this all sounds too much to swallow and I've left you atterly confused as to how "hu"/"fu" is meant to be pronounced in Japanese don't worry: I'll explain it is easier terms. Take the English world "who"; it's pronounced /hu:/. Notice how your lips are shaped for the vowel /u:/. The Japanese /u/ is about the same as the English /u:/ only shorter.

Now keep your lips rounded in the shape used for (this Japanese) /u/ (which is a little different to the English /u/ as in "book"). Try pronouncing [h] with your lips in this shape but relax your throat. Now try saying [hu] like this. You should be saying [Pu] which is the Japanese "hu"/"fu".

If this is still too much, try pronouncing the English word "food" = /fu:d/ but with rounded lips instead of letting your top teeth touch your bottom lips. With a bit of luck you should be pronouncing [Pu:d]. Drop the [d], shorten the vowel and you should have the Japanese "hu"/"fu".

If this is still too much, don't panic: as I've mentioned above you can get by easily enough just using good old [f] which we're all used to.

* in SAMPA. The IPA symbol is a phi.