ひらがな！

Ok, been a little while since last post, so figured it was time for another. Anyway, been kinda busy with work, so haven't gotten as far as would like. I have, however, finished the free lessons for ひらがな (hiragana) at Textfugu.com and now simply need to make enough to get a subscription (doing lifetime rather than monthly since it makes more sense). Learning the ひらがな was actually quite simple once I learned all of the standard kana. The だくてん (dakuten) and combination hiragana pretty much contain the same characters with a very minor difference that changes the way they sound. For example か (ka) becomes が (ga) by adding the " to か. This is called a Dakuten. They're really quite easy to learn since they follow the same pattern as their base kana... the K column becomes G column, T becomes D, etc. The only difference is with the H column, which can become B or P. For example: ひ (hi)　び (bi)　ぴ (pi)。 If you notice on the last one of those 3, the " is instead a small circle. This only happens with the H column to make P sounds. Other than that, it's pretty simple... just have to look for the little だくてん mark and recognize what it's changed to.

The one that's a little bit harder are combo hiragana, but even these are fairly simple, as they use the base kana combined with a small　や (ya)　ゆ (yu) or　よ (yo), like so: しょ to make different sounds; in this case sho, which is shi - i + yo - y = sho if you were to write it like a math equation. Basically, you remove the vowel sound from the base kana and replace it with the one from the や　ゆ　or　よ。 Note: I'm still unsure why Japanese periods are hollow... but it's kinda cool IMO。 There are some cases, however, where you do not remove the Y sound. きょ for example is pronounced Kyo. I'm not certain, but I believe this applies to all single consonant sounds (ka, ni, ma, to, etc.) and not to 2 consonant sounds (shi, tsu, chi, etc.). And to make them just a little more interesting... they too can use だくてん　(dakuten), such as びゃ (bya).

One last kana that can be a little confusing is the small つ (tsu). Which provides for double consonants. For example, nippon would look like this: にっぽん　rather than: にぽん. The hardest part about this one is knowing when to use it and when not to. Actually speaking a word with the small tsu is quite easy... you simply do a quick pause on the consonant sound that is used, then finish the word starting with that sound again. Kind of similar to to saying "Bookkeeper" with 2 K sounds.

There were a few other bits of info, but for the most part it kind of repeated the use of some key words that are seen a lot in Japanese grammar, like です (desu (typically pronounced des)). Now that I'm done with the free ひらがな lessons, I will probably try to learn カタカナ　（かたかな (katakana)） until I can afford my subscription. Anyway, That's pretty much all for now. Since PSN is down, I've been kind of bored outside of work and Japanese learning. Been on a White Knight Chronicles drive for some reason and really tempted to pick up the Japanese version. Just wish I knew more words so I could understand them. Oh well. Farewell (さよなら) for now!