Last Day of Class

For our last day of class, we finished off the kana with "Y", "R", and the oddball characters "Wa", "O", and "N". We did Kanji for another 10 minutes.  The last part of the class was spent playing with kana memory cards and attempting to read authentic manga.

Kanji

West: nishi, sai, sei

South: minimi, nan

North: kita; hoku, hoo

Mouth: guchi, kuchi, kou

Big: dai, tai, oo

Country: koku, goku, kuni

Session #3

This week we covered the "H" and "M" systems in hiragana and katakana.  The main focus of the class was kanji and more translation exercises.  Some of the kanji were review.

*Just a reminder*  The party is Dec. 14th @ 6-7:30 pm!

Kanji

Fire: ka; hi

Water: mizu; sui

Tree: moku; ki

Gold/Metal: kin

Money: kane

Earth/Soil: do; tsuchi

Weekday: you

Up: ue; jou

Down: shita; ka

Middle: naka; chou; jou

Half: han

Hundred: hyaku; piyaku; biyaku

Thousand: sen; zen

Ten Thousand: man

Yen: en

Circle: maru

Time: ji; toki

Heaven: ten

I, private: watashi; shi

Now: ima; kon

Woman: onna; jo

East: higashi; tou

Capital: kyou

Session #2

This week, we learned some more basic rules to reading Japanese;

-There are no spaces between the words.
-In manga, some punctuation is used; !? and ,.
-Manga reads right to left, and top to bottom.

We did a Translation Race for the last 20 minutes of class, using what was learned in class and a cheat sheet to try and read the two frames of manga.

In Hiragana, the "s", "t", and "n" systems were learned.
In Katakana, the "s", "t", and "n" systems were learned.

In kanji, I talked about combining the numbers (see below) with the kanji (gatsu/-getsu) to make the months of the year.


For example, May is

Numbers:

Ichi

Ni

San

Shi/Yon

Go

Roku

Shichi/Nana

Hachi

Kyuu

Juu

Session # 1

For the first session of MangaCon, we covered some basic rules for reading Japanese.  They are;

-Written Japanese doesn't have spaces between the words.
-There isn't any punctuation except for the "maru" (circle).
-Japanese has a certain order that has to be followed.

Another rule to remember:
-Japanese is a combination of hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

We went through the descriptions of the different writing systems;
-Hiragana is the first system that's learned.  It is used for native Japanese words.
-Katakana is the second system that's learned.  It is used for foreign words and emphasis.  It's seen on alot of signs.
-Kanji is the final system.  It's the pictographs, and the hardest system to learn. 

We started learning how to write all three systems, and at the end of class I handed out the assignment (translate the page in "What's the Word") and directed them to the MangaCon(version) blog and the Beginners' Japanese blog ( http://risingsunwetaskiwin.blogspot.com/) if they want to learn a little more on structure and sentence building.

Hiragana and katakana:

Vowels:

K system:

This is the site where the kanji pictures come from.  It's also a good resource if you want to look up combinations.

http://www.kanjisite.com/index.html

Kanji:

Sun: hi, -bi, nichi, ni

Day: ka

Moon: tsuki, getsu

Month: gatsu

Tree: moku, ki, boku

Mountain: yama, san, -zan

River: kawa, -gawa

Rice field: ta, -da, den

Man: hito, jin

Person: nin