User talk:Nesnad/sandbox/Learn to read, it's easy!

OK. So you are thinking ''I want to communicate! I don't want to learn boring foreign letter-shape things!!'' Stop right there! Learning one of the basic Japanese alphabets is not that hard. You can pull out a note book and write each character over and over for about 20 minutes and you should have the basics. No? You want to get started faster than that? Well, leave this window open and read the other lessons in another browser window. Use this window to help you decode the phrases. That will help you start memorizing if you are in too much of a hurry to memorize these now. Why not provide the text in roman letters? Because it's not hard to learn a basic foreign alphabet and you'll soon realize that the key to "jumping in" so to speak, is to be thinking in the target language. Still haven't convinced you? OK. Heres the cheat button. Just hover your browser cursor over this icon and see what it is in English letters. You really should learn the Japanese letters though. So if you haven't already; learn hiragana it isn't that hard.


 * basic hiragana: あ (a), い (i) , う (u) , え (e) , お (o) , か (ka) , き (ki) , く (ku) , け (ke) , こ (ko) , さ (sa) , し (shi) , す (su) , せ (se) , そ (so) , た (ta) , ち (chi) , つ (tsu) , て (te) , と (to) , な (na) , に (ni) , ぬ (nu) , ね (ne) , の (no) , は (ha) , ひ (hi) , ふ (fu) , へ (he) , ほ (ho) , ま (ma) , み (mi) , む (mu) , め (me) , も (mo) , や (ya) , ゆ (yu) , よ (yo) , ら (ra) , り (ri) , る (ru) , れ (re) , ろ (ro) , わ (wa) , を (wo) , ん (n)


 * You should also know:

That if you add a ” to K row sounds (such as か) it becomes a G. か (ka) becomes が (ga)

If you add a ” to S row sounds (such as さ) it becomes a Z. さ (sa) becomes ざ (za)

In the same way, add a ” to T row sounds (such as た) it becomes a D. た (ta) becomes だ (da)

Also add a ” to H row sounds (such as は) it becomes a B. は (ha) becomes ば (ba)

Finally a new one! Add ° to H row sounds (such as は) it becomes a P. は (ha) becomes ぱ (pa)

じ (ji), ぢ (ji) and づ (zu)
 * Three small exceptions

That's it! Not too hard. There are other ways to tweak these letters and a whole other set of letters plus Chinese characters. Don't worry about those for now. Now it's on to learning to communicate!

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