Japanese thread №2

[Revenant]

This thread is for ppl who are in active proces of studying Japanese. Here we discuss our problems, helping each other.

I have some quastions. in the begining of the sentence "watashi wa......." "wa" is は, but in alphabet I have a translation of it as "ha". Also I know that some symbols can change their meaning with adding to them two lines in the right corner. For example た is "ta", but だ is "da". And は changes from "ha" to "wa" without any additions. That is what I don't understand.

Any ideas?

[JET73L]

In the book I use, wa is
,
and that's what google images found as well. Other than that, I doubt I could help you right now, I'm still trying to see how much I've kept of basic theory and sentence structure since my NDS media player died at the star of vacation (no studying for over a week and a half). Then I;ll be back to studying writing as well, but until then, this is all I can do to help.
Actually, it does seem to be a contextual difference. The syllabary lists it as the image shown in my post, but in sentences, it seems to be the character in yours. It might possibly be a difference in sound when used with other words, or it may be a separate word in it's own right with it's ownj proper pronunciation. I would have to study through it a while longer to be able to say which, if either.

[Revenant]

I agree, that symbol is realy "wa". But in dialogs they write the symbol for "ha". Dunno why. Well I have to work this out anyway.

[Miss Lockheart]

I get easily mixed up between the Hiragana and the Katakana, so maybe that's why Revenant. The one JET posted I'm sure is Hiragana. Argh it's so confusing when there's three forms of symbols to learn

[Terminal Est]

Mada mada ne?

Ahem...interesting, but this is too complex for me to grasp. XD

[Revenant]

I start studying Japanese with learning the symbols and working with dialogs. And when I noticed that fact I was quite confused. That is why I created this thread.

I heared how the phrase "watashi wa gaksede." is pronounced in Japan, and noticed that in "watashi" "wa" sounds clearly, but that next part of the sentence is a little harder to determine. I found it similar to "ua". I guess.......maby in original it is not "wa" at all.........

[JET73L]

Originally Posted by Miss Lockheart

I get easily mixed up between the Hiragana and the Katakana, so maybe that's why Revenant. The one JET posted I'm sure is Hiragana. Argh it's so confusing when there's three forms of symbols to learn

I think hiragana is the more formal lettering, more closely based on the original syllables of chinese writing from which the letters were taken, and katakana is the simplified form where characters containing seven, ten, or even over a dozen strokes are cut down to about 2-5, but don;t quote me on that because I'm not absolutely sure.

[Miss Lockheart]

You're right about Hiragana, although it's used more for adjectives lesser verbs, pronouns etc. Basically the words around the nouns. Katakana is also used for words that have been adapted from English after the Americans lived there for a while. And English names too ^^

Kanji are the Chinese-based symbols that they use for nouns and important verbs. There are thousands of them, compared to about 46 each of Hiragana and Katakana. For now I'm concentrating on learning those, then eventually getting a dictionary with all the Kanji in it.

Hope this is helpful, I still get the Hiragana and Katakana mixed up but we're all human I guess

[JET73L]

Yeah, I knew kanji represented full words, I just thought both syllabaries were descended from the original system of chinese characters. Anyway, this subject could constitute an entire new thread, so I'll just leave it there for now.

[Miss Lockheart]

Yeah I think you're right about that too. And yeah we could go on about it for a long time