Japanese Word of the Week- April 12- 19, 2009

This weeks word: acceleration, encouragement
Pronunciation: sokushin
Kana: そくしん
Kanji: 促進

Japanese Word of the Week- April 5- 12, 2009

This week's word: tendency, movement, attitude
Pronunciation: doukou
Kana: どうこう
Kanji: 動向

Notes on Learning Japanese

Here are some notes that will help you learn Japanese that you might find interesting (even if your not learning Japanese or even if you can't understand them)

~Japanese uses 4 alphabets, Romaji which is the English alphabet and used for mainly pronunciation (like on the words of the week), Hiragana which is used to write native words such as "sushi" and has 46 characters that aren't letters, but sounds like "ka", "ki", or "ku" except for the 5 vowels and the letter "n", Katakana which are the same sounds as the Hiragana but look different and are used for cognates such as "terebi" (television) and are more angular than Hiragana characters, and Kanji which are from Chinese origin and are used to tell apart words that are the same.

~There are believed to be over 50,000 Kanji but they only teach 2,500 in school because that's how much you need to know to read a newspaper

~The word "desu" goes at the end of a sentence and can mean either "is", "am" or "are" ~The Japanese have no different words for present and future tense- ex. 私は食べる can either mean "I eat" or "I will eat"

~"desu" can be changed to "masu" if there is a verb at the end of a sentence ~Japanese don't use spaces

~The word order in Japanese is SVO (English is SOV)

Japanese Word of the Week- March 23- 30, 2009

This Week's Word- design
Pronunciation- dezain
Kana- デザイン
Kanji- (no kanji)

Japanese Word of the Week- March 15- 22, 2009

This Week's Word: to hear, to listen, to ask
Pronunciation: kiku
Kana: きく
Kanji: 聞く

Japanese Word of the Day- Feb 28 2009

Today's Word- indemnity, compensation
Pronunciation- baishou
Kana- ばいしょう
Kanji- 賠償

Japanese Word of the Day- Feb 27 2009

Today's Word- victory or defeat, match, contest, game, bout
Pronunciation- shoubu
Kana- しょうぶ
Kanji- 勝負

Japanese Word of the Day- Feb 26 2009

Today's Word- importance, stress, serious concentration
Pronunciation- juushi
Kana- じゅうし
Kanji- 重視

Japanese Word of the Day- Feb 25 2009

Today's Word- understand
Pronunciation- wakaru
Kana- わかる
Kanji- 理解する

Japanese Word of the Day- Feb 23 2009

Today's Word- middle school
Pronunciation- chuugaku
Kana- ちゅうがく
Kanji- 中学校

Japanese Word of the Day- Feb 22 2009

Today's Word- noon, mid- day
Pronunciation- shougo
Kana- しょうご
Kanji- 正午