Monday, Week 3  -  New week, new challenges - katakana

So, it's week 3 already. I've written and read hiragana often enough to recognize all characters that I encounter in a text now. Last week's chapter (2) introduced katakana which is the second writing system in Japanese. There are equally as many characters as in hiragana.

I find that katakana is harder to learn because the characters are so simple that they look like each other. It can be quite confusing in the beginning. Here are some characters that I find easier to remember because their corresponding hiragana character looks about the same (excuse my horrible handwriting):

As usual my way to learn new characters is to write it many times. At the same time you will improve your handwriting, quite useful if you want somebody to understand what you write...

For more details about katakana, check out the katakana section.

I practiced writing for about 30 minutes and then I went on with DreamKana (a simple and useful flashcard software) until I got tired of it. I will try to practice a couple of minutes with DreamKana every day this week, hopefully it will be enough.

Tuesday, Week 3  -  Verbs, verbs, verbs

Chapter three introduces many new things like verbs and more complicated sentence structure. Another thing that is introduced is kanji (Chinese characters).

Verbs
Verbs in Japanese are grouped into different categories, this week we learn how to use "ru-verbs" and "u-verbs". Verbs ending with ru like たべる (eat) are usually ru-verbs and those ending with u like のむ are u-verbs.

For more information about verbs, see the verbs section.

This week's sentence structure

Topic		time		place		object		verb
____	は	_____	に	_____	で	_____	を	_____。
（わたし	は）					コーヒー	を	のみます。
I drink coffee.
（わたし	は）			きっさてん	で	コーヒー	を	のみます。
I drink coffee at the café.
（わたし	は）	しちじ	に	きっさてん	で	コーヒー	を	のみます。
I drink coffee in the café at seven o'clock.

Wednesday, Week 3  -  Time time

Plural in Japanese doesn't exist, with one exception. That is to add 々 after the word to be pluralized. The 々 character makes a duplication of the preceding word (a kanji). This only works for some words though, not all.

Thursday, Week 3  -  Weekdays and months

I think it's time to introduce the weekdays and months in Japanese. All days end with ようび and months with がつ.

One interesting thing with the weekdays is that the first kanji in Tuesday to Saturday stands for an element.

Friday, Week 3  -  Shopping

Today we practiced shopping phrases on the conversation class. Putting together what we learnt about ko/so/a/do and numbers.

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