13 Jul 2008
I want to learn Japanese
So I decided to learn Japanese a while back and have since set about trying to learn how best to learn that. After careful consideration I’ve decided that the best approach fits who I am and how I learn. So multi tiered and coming from multiple angles. I need to learn the alphabets (there’s 4), learn the structure, and build my vocabulary.
The book I got ‘Japanese, Step by Step’, by Gene Nishi, so far fits me wonderfully. It is written by an IBM engineer to teach other engineers Japanese quickly and easily. It lays out patterns and building blocks for sentences. This has given me enough of a framework for the language structure that I am recognizing things when I hear spoken Japanese. I will have to work through it a few more times to fully nail these down.
It also has lists of basic vocabulary to learn. So far, I haven’t given this much consideration except as tools to learn the alphabets. Once I can read, this should pick up fairly quickly on its own. I hope. I built my vocabulary in English to where it is by reading a lot. The bad part is I need to know the alphabets first.
For the alphabets, I’ve got one down pat so far. Romanji is Japanese written using our characters, so not overly impressive to have that 
I have nearly a third of the Hiragana script down pat and working through it nicely, along with understanding its quirks and nuances. Hiragana is the script used to write native Japanese words and is more curvy and flowing than Katakana. Katakana is the other script but is used for writing out foreign and imported words. Each of these has slightly over 40 characters in them, each representing a syllable sound.
The final alphabet of sorts is Kanji, the little pictographs. Apparently there’s only two thousand I need to know to be considered literate. Each one has a meaning and a pronunciation (or two) to be memorized, as well as the stroke order for writing. I’ve poked at this, but it seems a very daunting task so far. One I’ll need to tackle head on fairly soon. My hope is that once I can read hiragana and katakana I can start picking up Japanese kids books and learn the kanji as I learn the vocabulary.