Learning the Kana

By Abner Huertas

皆さんこんばんは。

Good evening to everyone. In the last post we're talking about the Japanese alphabet, or the syllabary. 

In this post I will give you some suggestions to learn the Kana. Remember that there are two syllabaries: the hiragana and the katakana. Both syllabaries have the same sounds, what changes are the symbols.

Each syllabary has about 44 symbols. First let's recognise each syllabary:

Hiragana:　あいえうおかきけくこ

Katakana:  アイエウオカキケクコ

In the example above you can see the difference between both, as you can see the hiragana syllabary has more "curves" than the katakana syllabary. Hiragana it's the most used. Katakana is more used for foreign words.

Now, one of the first things you would like to learn are those syllabaries. Believe me, it’s easy, but you have to have discipline.

I learnt these syllabaries by doing homework. First I started with hiragana and did some written exercises such as this:

As you can see, I wrote the phonetic sound in romaji at the top and the corresponding hiragana below.

I did the same with katakana with a small difference, to remember the hiragana and it's katakana counterpart, I wrote both symbols, in this way I remembered each sound in both syllabaries.

Once you have finished your homework, you need to practice. If you have an iPad I recommend you an app called: Nihongo no Kana, this app will let you practice your new knowledge. The best of this app is that will help you to practice a proper way to write each kana. You can download it from the App Store.

Another great tool is called: Kana-Match a game where you have to pair each symbol with its counterpart, for example you have to pair お with オ. This game will improve your memory with both syllabaries. As you can see learning can be very fun.

In the following posts I will share with you other games that will let you practice and improve your kana.

またね。

The Japanese alphabet

By Abner Huertas

Hi, welcome back. In the following posts I'd like to talk about the first steps, at least the ones I've made, to start learning Japanese, in this post I'll begin with the Japanese alphabet.

One of the first things, is to know the basic differences between the languages. First, and foremost, is the alphabet. Japanese doesn't use our alphabet for writing, just as a reference.

Japanese uses three different writing sets: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. The first two are phonetic syllabary and the third is an ideogram. Japanese language also uses a Romanji alphabet, those are the same letters that you already know, they use this to make "understandable" their writing for westerns, and to make it easy the use of western technology, specially computers.

A syllabary is different from an alphabet that in a syllabary each symbol represent a syllable, for example: ne is ね. An alphabet each symbol is just one letter. Kanji is an ideogram, this means that each symbol represents a word or an idea.

Hiragana is the starter point, then is Katakana, and then Kanji. Let me give you an example of each one, I'll write: "My name is Abner".

私はアブナーです。  

watashi wa Abner  desk.

The first part is Kanji 私 (watashi), then follows the hiragana particle は (wa); next is my name in katakana アブナー (Abner), and last is the verb です (desu) that it's like "to be". Hiragana has more "curves" while Katakana has more "straight" lines.

At this point I'm still an absolute beginner in Japanese, but I can give you an advice. If you really want to learn Japanese, don't rely just in romanji, that's a bad practice. Learn Hiragana first, then learn Katakana.

At this point I've already learnt hiragana and katakana, I feel like if I'm reading as a kindergarten. To learn this two syllabaries I've used a method that consists of doing  "elementary homework" and by playing games.

In the next post I will teach you a method to learn this two syllabaries. In my case took me three weeks to learn.

またね。  

Who am I?

By Abner Huertas

A few things about me before we continue with this journey. I'm a business consultant, a learner and a writer. I've three more blogs, all of them in spanish. 

The first blog is about business, there I write about my experience of more than 10 years as a business consultant. I've been working with Cost and Profitability, Planning and Budgeting, and Visual Analytics models for financial institutions, manufacturing, services and commercial firms. If you'd like to check it out you can go to blog.abnerhuertas.com.

My second blog is about improving your self. I'm a fan of self growth, so I write about subjects such as 'Integrity', 'Why we do what we do?', 'You attract who you are, not who you want', and so, and so. If you'd like to check it out please visit: blog.integridaddeoro.org

My third blog is about love, yes... love. I write poems, I even have some e-books on amazon. In this blog I take time to put in words the feelings that a man can have. You can visit my blog here: www.letrasalcorazon.com

And I've been written some books since 2012, my favourite is a novel that I called: Karlita. It's the story of an eight year old who's adopted and... somethings start to happen. 

Now let's move on.  In the next post I'll talk a little bit about how I learnt my second language, and how this knowledge is helping me with the third.

じゃまた。

My journey begins

By Abner Huertas

Hi, welcome to my blog. My name is Abner（アブナー）and I'd like to share with you my journey to learn a third language. On January first 2016, I decided to embark on a new journey: to learn Japanese. Since I was a little boy, now I'm 36, I wanted to learn another language, and in some way I've already done that because I learnt english, but what I truly wanted was to have a new challenge, something different. My native language is spanish by the way.

So I decided to learn a new language. My first question: Which language should I learn?; I was attracted to Korean as well, but let's say that it was like if something was telling me learn Japanese, and here I am, right now I can say that I'm learning Japanese.

One question that came to my mind was: How am I going to learn a third language? and How am I going to do it without neglecting the English; well I just remembered how I started to learn english and then to apply the same 'rules', of course with some changes, and just begin and have fun in the process, that's for the first question, and for the second one the answer was simple: to learn Japanese through my second language.

One of the 'easiest' parts of learning english is that it shares the same alphabet with spanish, well with some extra characters in spanish, but you don't have to learn a new alphabet. One of the must difficult things in english is that you don't pronounce a word in the same way you write it. In this way, one of the difficult things in Japanese is that you have to learn two syllabary and one ideogram, I'll talk to you about this in other posts; one of the 'easiest' things in Japanese, at least for native spanish speakers, is that the pronunciation is according to the writing. But well, that's what I now for the moment, because I'm an absolute beginner in Japanese.

In the following posts I will share with you my learning methods, perhaps some might sound to you if you're thinking to learn a third language. If you'd like to ask me something, please feel free to left a comment and I'll answer.

See you soon...

じゃまた。