The quest begins!

My quest has finally begun! I have started my Japanese learning journey! With so many learning options, knowing what resource to use can be challenging. Luckily, I've done some research, and I have decided to use Textfugu as my beginner's Japanese learning resource. I have found that this course is really down-to-earth, and that's something really important to have when you're learning anything, especially a language. The author of the site constantly stresses how much effort the learning process is going to require, in attempt to weed those who aren't ready for the responsibility of learning the Japanese language. It's really a no-nonsense way to learn. Textfugu also offers a variety of resources that even a non-subscriber (like myself, at the moment) can access with ease, such as hiragana and katakana charts. I would definitely consider myself lucky that I found such an appropriate beginners' resource. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone seriously considering to get into learning Japanese. Maybe someday, if I buy a subscription, I'll do a review. But if, for now, you'd like to give TextFugu's free trial a shot, follow the link below:

http://www.textfugu.com/

Speaking of these charts, today, I started learning about the Japanese "alphabet" today. There are three types of Japanese "alphabets". There is romaji, which is essentially useless, there is hiragana, used for basic Japanese and conjunctions, Katakana, which is used for foreign words derived from other countries as well as onomatopoeia, and Kanji, a collection of over 3,000 Chinese symbols. Kanji is the meat and potatoes of the Japanese writing system, as it is expected that, in order to be proficient, one must be able to recognize and write 2,000 kanji that is generally used in everyday speech. Looks like this alphabet is going to be a total butt-kicker.

 Well, it's not really called an alphabet, per say, but rather called syllabaries. The characters in the alphabet essentially represent a syllable. So it's sort of like in romanized characters, but actually a bunch easier when you get the hang of it!

Below is a diagram of hiragana characters and their corresponding pronunciations. These are pretty much the "verbs" of hiragana.

あ → a (Pronounced "ah", like in car)
い → i (Pronounced "ii", like in key)
う → u (Pronounced "oo", like in moo)
え → e (Pronounced "eh", like in edge)
お → o (Pronounced "oh", like in comb)

I went over that, basically. Then, we went over the fact that the chart has a pattern where it places a consonant in front of the vowel, and repeats (with a few exceptions, of course.)

It seems like we're jumping right into the action! The rest is just general pronunciation. I seem to excel in the pronunciation department. I feel like it is the result of watching so many Japanese dubbed animes! xD

I look forward to learning more hiragana rules, and more exceptions to the seemingly simple world of hiragana! I hope to be more "on the ball" tomorrow, because today I felt sorta sick, and non-lucid. But other than that, I was totally determined!!

Maybe my future posts wont be so long! But geez it feels great to post what I've learned! :P This was my super long post today, and I suppose I will see you guys tomorrow! This is just the beginning!