NemueL

Good day everyone! Today, im gonna teach you basic japanese. ill try my best to make it easy and understandable.

first of all, i want u guys to learn the basic writing. they have 4 ways of writing:

1. roomaji - its a japanese writing, but you use english alphabet to spell japanese words like these "konichiwa" "arigatoo"

2. hiragana - it is japanese characters. it is used only for japanese words. its their own character. (cant write it here)

3. katakana - katakana is also japanese character; however, this character is only used for borrowed words like " helicopter" "table" "california"

4 kanji - japanese people borrowed a lot of chinese characters, and this is kanji. basically, kanji is  really same as chinese character but has different pronunciation. chinese characters, on the other hand, have two types of wrting too, traditional and simplified. kanji is more on simplified chinese character.

but here we are using roomaji today.

first part

like tagalog we have vowels like a,e,i,o,u, in japanese is pretty much the same thing, but the order is different, a, i, u, e, o. so for tagalog speakers, japanese pronunciation must be easy.

a, i, u, e, o
ka, ki, ku, ke, ko
sa, shi, su, se, so
ta, chi, tsu, te, to
na, ni, nu, ne , no
ha, hi, fu, he, ho
ma, mi, mu, me, mo
ra, ri, ru, re, ro

and they have:

ya, yu, yo
wa, wo
n

they also have compound syllable, but im not gonna go over that today.

second part

japanese grammar is totally different from english. like in english, the subject comes first before the verb and object is at the end of the sentece(SVO). on the other hand, japanese has SOV which means subject first then the object and the verb.

For example:

by the way, ill give u some verb vocabulary

dict form (informal form)       -masu form(polite form)                     english
taberu                                 tabemasu                                       eat
nomu                                  nomimasu                                      drink
wakaru                               wakarimasu                                     understand

I -  watashi/watakushi/atashi (there r many ways of saying I)
my - watashi no/watakushi no/ atashi no (just put "no" in order to be possesive pronoun)
you - anata (theres also a lot of ways saying you)
me - watashi o/ watashi ni ( "o" and "ni" are used for direct object, but "o" and "ni" have diff functions)

am i making any sense? i hope so...

okay!

this time we r gonna use polite form

english SVO                         japanese SOV

i eat sushi                            watashi wa sushi o tabemasu (polite form)
you drink sake                      anata wa sake o nomimasu
i eat your sushi                     watashi wa anata no sushi o tabemasu
you drink my sake                anata wa watashi no sake o nomimasu

as u have noticed, there is "wa" after the subject. its kindda like "ay" in tgalog.( ako ay, siya ay)something like that. u also have noticed that before the verb there is "o". "o" indicates the direct object. it is always placed after the direct object.

**sake is a japanese rice wine

part three

verb conjugation

present tense         present negative tense    past tense               past neg. tense

tabemasu                 tabemasen                   tabemashita            tabemasen deshita
nomimasu                nomimasen                  nomimashita            nomimasen deshita
wakarimasu             wakarimasen                wakarimashita          wakarimasen deshita

as u can see, there is a pattern, right?for the prest neg tense, the verbs end in "sen" and for the past tense, the verbs end with "mashita". lastly, the past neg, it ends with "sen" plus "deshita".

for example:

i ate sushi                         watashi wa sushi o tabemashita
you dont eat sushi             anata wa sushi o tabemasen
i didnt eat sushi                 watashi wa sushi o tabemasen deshita

part four:

question marks

to make the sentence a question, just add "ka" at the end.

for example

do u eat sushi?                  anata wa sushi o tabemasu ka?
do u understand?               wakarimasu ka?

in japanese writing, it doesnt have punctuation for a question mark (?) i just put it just to emphasize that it is a question, but "ka" already tells that the sentence is a question. i hope u got what i meant.
also, if ur only talking to one person, you dont have to repeat "anata wa" always coz it is understood that u r talking to the same person.

last part for today!

common greetings:

good morning!                                          ohayoo gozaimasu
good day/hello/good afternoon                   konichiwa
good evening                                           konbanwa
good night                                             (o)yasuminasai *put "o" for girls to be more polite
good bye                                                sayonara
see u later                                              ja mata/mata ne *mata means again
how r u?                                                 genki desu ka? *jap literally means hows ur health?
yes im ok/fine                                         hai! genki desu
yes                                                        hai
no                                                          iie
thank you/thanks                                    arigatoo
hello(on the phone)                                 moshi moshi

i think, thats it for today!  i hope i made sense.

did u learn something? pls comment and let me know what else u wanna know for basic japanese. next time i'll put a video so that ull also learn the pronunciation.        

till next time!


Noah Nemuel Nano