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5 Things Every Beginner Should Know

Posted on | November 13, 2009 | 7 Comments

There are always more tips and tricks that can be learned, but this is a list of what I consider to be some of the most important things a beginner should learn when studying Japanese! These are things I wish I was taught the first week I started.

1. みなさん、こんにちは！

If you didn’t catch that, I basically just gave it away. You may not be able to read the above text, so it may look like nothing but squares or gibberish, but even if that is the case we will soon get to the romaji version as well. If you can read the above, and understand it, this is what I am talking about! It’s so useful, at least in my opinion.

Basically, when you want to say something to everyone you can use mina(みな） which means “everyone”, but it’s generally nice to use mina-san(みなさん） because you’re referring to the collective the same way you would refer to other people directly with san(さん）. Anyways, just do it whether you want to or not!

I find this term very important and use it daily because I am constantly in a chat room when on the PC, monitoring others while they talk about Japanese(and often joining in or asking questions of my own), so I needed to know how to thank everyone. Here are a few examples of how to use the phrase:

1. Mina-san, konnichiwa!(みなさん、こんにちは！)
2. Arigatou gozaimasu, mina-san!(ありがとうございます、みなさん！)
3. Konbanwa mina-san!(こんばんはみなさん！)

As you can see, mina-san(みなさん) can be at the beginning or at the end in these cases. I’m not very experienced so I can’t say how true it is for others.

2. wa(わ) or ha(は)

One of the most common mistakes I see is the wa(わ） and ha(は） mistake. Let’s look at an example sentence:

From the above picture, which roughly means “I am Japanese”, we can see that the pronunciation of that sentence is almost identical to the romaji. The only difference is the the ha(は) is now pronounced wa(like わ). The rule for this is that when ha(は) is used as a particle in a sentence, the pronunciation changes even though the spelling remains the same. When typing, or writing, it out you still use ha(は). So how do you know when to use ha(は） versus wa? Well, simply based on experience. You have to be able to break the sentence apart to figure out whether ha(は) is acting as a particle or not. Here is an example where ha(は) is a part of a word, and therefore pronounced like it looks:

The above sentence means “It is eight o’clock at evening/night.” Hachiji(八時) means 8 o’clock, with hachi(はち) being 8. As we can see, ha(は) is actually pronounced how it looks like it would be pronounced. The difference is that ha(は) is now a part of a word and is not being used as a particle. The only way to know that the ha(は) in yonohachijidesu(よの八時です) is not used as a particle, is to know how to break the sentence up, which means to know at least some of the other words surrounding it.

3. Where are you from?

Tourists or foreigners studying Japanese(or any language) are often asked “Where are you from?”, but there are really three types of answer you can provide and you need to know the difference between them. First, the easiest and most common way is to simply say what you are.

The above is a great way to let people know what you and where you’re from, but it isn’t very specific. What if we want to give someone a little bit more info, such as to where we were born? If I said I was Japanese, that doesn’t say much. I’d like to let them know I was born in Kyoto and here is how:

Now what if I’ve told them what I am and where I am from, but I live somewhere else? Well, that’s take a look at how to construct a sentence for that purpose!

The above says “I live in Osaka”. There you have it! You can explain everything about where you are from with these sentences.

4. Learn the most common words first

I’ve just started using this technique myself. Why learn a ton of words you won’t be commonly using all the time when you’re just starting off and don’t have much of a vocabulary to begin with? The answer is, you shouldn’t. There are a certain set of words in every language, that tend to be the most used words, especially for speech because we tend to talk about and reference a lot of the same things each day. I believe getting to a speaking/understanding level as quick as possible(not too quick), is a great way to generate motivation to keep going. After that, focus on the hardcore studying.

To be honest, it shouldn’t take more than 3-4 months to learn a large portion of the most common words, basic grammar structure to put them to use, and how to read/write Hiragana and Katakana so you’re conversing in Japanese, not romaji. I’ve just started reading Instant Japanese: How to express 1,000 different ideas with just 100 key words and phrases! and so far it is really great. I’m sure that there are more than 100 words needed, but already since just studying the first half of these thoroughly, I find that I am picking up on things a LOT better.

Just recently I created a Smart.fm goal just for this purpose. Hell it’s just for this book! I was studying another person’s Smart.fm list of this book but it was incomplete, so I decided to make my own. Feel free to sign up and check it out here.

5. Learn Japanese like the Japanese

If you really stop to think about how a child in Japan, or any country for that matter, would learn their native language while growing up, then you recognize that they learn by experience. Parents, teachers, friends, etc all point items out to them and explain what they are. They get to see an item picked up and a word mumbled along with it, over and over until they finally remember it. I think this is how we were meant to learn.

いぬ

Often, we use tools that translate from Japanese to English, because we don’t know any Japanese so we couldn’t possibly translate from Japanese to Japanese, right? Wrong… kind of. While I believe Japanese to English does work in the end, learning as the Japanese learn, or rather, simply as a kid learns, makes us much more proficient in a language. You may say, “But how can we do this, we aren’t in Japan and don’t have anyone to point out what things mean without us using a dictionary… which is Japanese to English.” You’re right, because I’m in the same boat. I think what needs to happen is for a book and/or utility to be made to use picture flash cards.

Tools like this probably already exist. That’s probably what Japanese parents buy their kids to learn things. I’m investigating more into this area and will definitely let you know what I find out. All I can say is that for now, don’t stop learning ever. Just because a better method may exist doesn’t mean you should stop all of your learning in search of it. Also, remember that when you’re translating a word or a sentence, don’t try to generate exact translations. Just understand the translation as a matching “concept” or “expression of thought” from one sentence to another. It’s the meaning behind the words and sentences that are important, not how they’re formed(aka, don’t translate Japanese grammar into English grammar in any fashion).

If you get a chance, go over to Rainbowhill’s blog and take a look at this recent article of his, on how to use a monolingual dictionary to unlock your hidden potential in Japanese!

Sayounara（さようなら）！

I hope you learned something new today or at least reviewed over a few useful items!

– PS: If I am wrong about anything, feel free to correct me! I am quite new to Japanese but learning more and more each day!

Author: Zyaga

I'm a Computer Programmer / Web Developer, though I have quite a lot of other hobbies and interests. You can usually find me studying Japanese, Blogging, watching Anime(for hours at a time), or possibly even practicing some Martial Arts. My brain runs rampant so I have to fuel it's fire by having many hobbies to switch back and forth from.

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