Unit 1 of Pimsleur Japanese 1

In Japanese there are four different writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Romaji. Hiragana - Japanese alphabet characters used for Japanese words and particles. Katakana - Japanese alphabet characters used for foreign words, animals and sounds. Kanji - Chinese characters used for whole words, or parts of words. Romaji - This is English characters used to show the pronunciation of Japanese words. If you wish to become proficient in reading and writing Japanese, you need to learn kanji. However, if you are a beginner (like me), you should learn hiragana and katakana first then kanji. For the majority of readers of this course, I will use romaji to update my blog. If there are mistakes or errors, please post a correction! Thank you!
Unit 1 of Pimsleur Japanese 1 Notes:

Conversation: sumimasen, eigo ga wakarimasu ka. Excuse me, do you understand English? iie, wakarimasen. nihongo ga wakarimasu ka. No, I don't understand. Do you understand Japanese? hai, sukoshi wakarimasu. Yes, I understand a little. anata wa amerika-jin desu ka. Are you American? hai, watashi wa amerika-jin desu. Yes, I am American New Vocabulary: sumimasen - Excuse me. eigo - English language. eigo ga - English used in a sentence.

wakarimasu - To understand / I understand. ka - Used at the end of the sentence to form a question / spoken question mark. wakarimasu ka - Do you understand? eigo ga wakarimasu ka - Do you understand English? iie - No. eigo ga wakarimasu - I understand English. wakarimasen - I don't understand. eigo ga wakarimasen - I don't understand English. iie, wakarimasen - No, I don't understand. nihongo - Japanese language. nihongo ga - Japanese used in a sentence. nihongo ga wakarimasu - I understand Japanese. nihongo ga wakarimasen - I don't understand Japanese. nihongo ga wakarimasu ka - Do you understand Japanese? sukoshi - A little / a few. sukoshi wakarimasu - I understand a little. nihongo ga sukoshi wakarimasu - I understand Japanese a little. amerika-jin - American (nationality). anata wa - You (when used in a sentence). anata wa - You are desu - Am / are anata wa amerika-jin desu - You are American. anata wa amerika-jin desu ka - Are you American?

watashi wa - I (when used in a sentence). watashi wa - I am anata wa amerika-jin desu - You are American. watashi wa amerika-jin desu - I am American. anata wa amerika-jin desu ka - Are you American? hai - Yes. hai, sukoshi - Yes, a little. * In this lesson, you noticed that the Japanese word order is very different from what you are accustomed to in English. ~ Cherry-san