Japanese I: Kanas.
*Disclaimer: I am not a teacher, these are my old notes translated to English from the time I took one Japanese course that I had to drop out of due to time management issues. I am currently working on self studying it.
These are the basic Hiragana and Katakana, however a lot of combinations that are used also exist such as the following hiragana chart.
It is advisable to write down as often as possible at first and search for literature that uses simple Japanese to keep them in your memory.
The main difference between hiragana and katakana are their usages, katakana is mostly used for borrowed words such as "エルフ" (Elf) and "スライム" (Slime) along with foreign names like "ジャック" (Jack) and "エリザベス" (Elizabeth). However Japanese does not always have the corresponding sounds and thus it is very usual to substitute it with another like we see in the name Elizabeth. If we were to romajisize the katakana, we'd get "Erizabesu" as "th" sound doesn't exist in Japanese and depending on the dialect, R or L may not exist either.
Japanese is also works in syllables hence many words are given extra sounds like seen in エルフ (rom. E-ru-fu), this also carries over to names like ジャック (ja-k-ku).
While studying the language and especially how the katakana works, please bear in mind that not every loan word comes from the same language. For example the Japanese word for Christ is actually taken from Portugal as is the word for captain.
Some texts also have small script written above kanji, these are referred to as furigana and they are there to help you to read the kanji correctly as they often have multiple reading ways which change depending on the context. The sentences in this image reads as "Watashi no inu" which translates into "My dog".
Apps I've used for self study: Kanji Study, Obenkyo, Japanese Dictionary Takoboto, Learn Japanese, J-Crosswords (by renshuu)
SLIME OUT!
