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HINAKO'S JAPANESE LANGUAGE SCHOOL 日向子さんの日本語学校 (Hinako-san no nihongo gakko) (( OOC INFO: The purpose of this topic and the ones that will follow is for Factions such as Little Tokyo to be able to use basic Japanese words for adding effect. )) Minasan konnichiwa! Hello, everyone! My name is Hinako and welcome to my online Japanese lessons. Last time we learned some basic grammar and how we can introduce ourselves. At this point, I would like to mention that Japanese is a language that has many complex forms of politeness, depending on who you're speaking to. Let me reference an example of the previous lesson which you can find by clicking HERE. EXAMPLES: My name is Hinako. Hinako desu. (日向子です) Watashi wa Hinako desu. (私は日向子です) Watashi no namae wa Hinako desu. (私の名前は日向子です) Hinako to moushimasu. (日向子と申します) The first two examples roughly translate as I am Hinako. As I said in the previous lesson, remember the formula X wa Y desu, as it will hold the foundation for everything in Japanese. In this lesson, I would like to focus on some greetings. It is essential to know how to greet the other person, depending on their status or the time of day. Let's begin with how to say good morning, good afternoon/evening, and good night. Ohayou gozaimasu (おはようございます) - Good morning (Polite) Gozaimasu can be skipped when talking to someone you want to be casual to. EXAMPLE: Ohayo gozaimasu, Hinako-sensei. (おはようございます日向子先生) Good morning, Hinako-sensei. Konnichiwa (こんにちは) - Good day/afternoon (Polite/Casual) You can use that word to say good day or good afternoon. Konnichi (こんにち) means either day or afternoon, followed by the particle Wa (は), which we introduced last time. The way it is pronounced is kind of tricky. Do you see the double N's in Konnichiwa? ん (Un, N, M) is a letter in the Japanese language that can sometimes be considered silent or as a moan. When followed by a syllable such as Ni, the ん becomes a moan. So, the basic pronunciation of the word is Ko-n-nichiwa. Konbanwa (こんばんは) - Good evening (Polite/Casual) It is exactly the same as Konnichiwa in its pronunciation. Konban (こんばん) means evening, so you are literally wishing someone a good evening, during the evening or nighttime hours. Oyasuminasai (おやすみなさい) - Good night (Polite) -nasai can be skipped to make the word casual. It literally means good night. BONUS WORDS Here are some words you can use throughout your day. Jaa (じゃあ) - Well then / So Usually used when you want to say to someone: Okay, then or Well, see you later. Mata ne (またね) - See you later / Goodbye You can also combine Jaa and Mata ne into one phrase. You can also skip Ne if you want. Jaa, mata ne! / Jaa, mata! - Well then, see you later! Sayounara ( さようなら) - Goodbye Don't use this word unless you are never going to see the other person again, or it's going to be some time until you do. FUN FACT: Ne (ね) is usually used at the end of a phrase, It can either mean "right?" or "it is, isn't it?". You can also use that word by itself when you want to prepare the other person for something you are about to say, or even call them. It's the exact use of the saying "Say... etc etc". So don't be afraid to use it! Thank you so much for reading this blog! 読んでくれてありがとう! Yonde kurete arigatou!

HINAKO'S JAPANESE LANGUAGE SCHOOL 日向子さんの日本語学校 (Hinako-san no nihongo gakko) (( OOC INFO: The purpose of this topic and the ones that will follow is for Factions such as Little Tokyo to be able to use basic Japanese words for adding effect. )) Minasan konnichiwa! Hello, everyone! My name is Hinako and welcome to my online Japanese lessons. Let me tell you a few things about myself first before we get right to the point. I was born and raised in Kyoto (京都), a traditional city of Japan. My passion from an early age was the study of human psychology and behavior, so I dedicated almost half of it to that particular study. Right now I am a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) majoring in Clinical Psychology, and a Doctor of Medicine (MD) majoring in Psychiatry. The need to start this blog came the second time I found myself in Los Santos. It saddened me when I witnessed that the Japanese-American community no longer spoke my native language, and even emerged into the American culture and linguistic standards. Of course, there is no wrong or right with that. But I am a strong supporter of knowing one's history and language. Hence this blog. With no further due, let's get to the first lesson! The very first thing I want to talk about is the phonetics and writing system. Hiragana (ひらがな), Katana (カタカナ), and Chinese characters, commonly known as Kanji (漢字). In these lessons, however, the writing systems will not be included, unless specifically asked to. The writing system I will be using will be common Latin characters, known in Japan as Romaji. Let's take a look at the Japanese phonetic system. It consists of only five vowels. The rest are just syllables with various combinations of vowels and consonants. Take a look at the charts below to get familiar with the sounds, and how they look like in Hiragana and Katakana. *DO NOT GET INTIMIDATED BY THE COMPLEX WRITING. WE ARE JUST FOCUSING ON THE SOUNDS. Now that we got that out of the way, let's begin with the real lesson. We are going to learn... You guessed it! How to introduce ourselves! In Japanese, the sentence structure is reversed. Meaning, that instead of Subject, Verb, and Object as the usual order that the rest of the normal world has (not), we reverse Verb with Subject.. For example: My name is Hinako. In Japanese, it becomes: My name Hinako is. How do we do that? The word for /am-is-are/ is desu (silent U). The word for /I/ is Watashi (私) for women (and in some formal cases by men), and Ore (俺) or Boku (僕) for men. No (の) in Japanese is a particle that indicates possession. And Wa (は) is a particle that marks the topic of discussion. Although it is written as /Ha/, in that case, it's pronounced like Wa. The Japanese word for /name/ is namae. Easy right? So, how do we say "My name is ..."? The structure is as follows: "X wa Y desu". Remember that formula. My name is Hinako. -> Watashi no namae wa Hinako desu. To be fair, there are a hundred ways to introduce yourself. The most common one is to just say [Your name] and add desu. Example: Hinako desu. I'm sorry if this got a little confusing... for these lessons, I want to avoid as much grammar as possible, so we can focus on the essential stuff. (Greetings, etc) Thank you so much for reading this blog! 読んでくれてありがとう! Yonde kurete arigatou!

I'm only asking this because I intend on creating a Brazilian character and I wanna make sure that I portray her properly.