Japanese Lesson #3: Hiragana た-の
Lesson 3: Hiragana た-の
Lesson filepack: http://www.aragami.org/japanese/Japa...ic_Lesson3.zip
Quiz: http://www.animeonline.net/f23/japan...-3-quiz-33871/
Master Thread: http://www.animeonline.net/f23/free-...lessons-33193/
Material covered in this lesson
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1. Stroke Order and Stroke Number
2. hiragana - た ち つ て と な に ぬ ね の
3. vocabulary/pronunciation
1. Stroke Order and Stroke Number
There is a bit of controversy over the actual importance of stroke order and number. Quite a few Japanese learners (including some Japanese children) pay very little attention to the conventions of stroke order and number, memorizing the characters for how they look and writing them however they please. With automatic character recognition on cellphones and computers, writing skill seems to be getting rustier across the board.
But there are some very good reasons to learn stroke order and number!
- Calligraphy. Japanese calligraphy is beautiful and a skill that's completely accessable to 2nd language-learners if they choose to pursue it. But where you choose to lift your brush and its movements are more apparent in calligraphy than in pencil and pen writing. Every mistake you make will be completely obvious to anyone looking at your work.
- Handwriting input. Dictonaries with styluses and all of those Nintendo DS language trainers are awesome. Even IME has handwriting input for looking up those pesky characters that you have no notion how to pronounce. The catch is, if you input characters in the wrong order or with the wrong stroke number, your writing won't be properly recognized by the doohicky in question.
- Kanji Dictionaries. Kanji dictionaries are organized by radical and stroke number. Without knowledge of either, you're dead in the water.
- Writing in public. If you intend to teach at a Japanese school, work at a Japanese company, go to university in Japan, or even just post tutorials on Youtube: chances are you will be writing Japanese in public... in front of people who know proper stroke order and will snigger at you if yours sucks.
- Testing. The Kanji Kentei and most university Japanese exams include sections on stroke order. If you don't know it, you're going to take a beating score-wise.
That said. In the end, the decision is up to you. But if you stick with Japanese long-term, you will need to know stroke order. It's easier to learn it in the first place than to go back and try to catch up later.
I'm not going to test you on stroke order in quizzes but I will include information on stroke order and number in the lesson material. Whether your memorize it or not is your call.
2. Hiragana た-の
Now for your next set of hiragana ~ this week you'll be learning 10 characters.
た - ta
ち - chi
つ - tsu
て - te
と - to
な - na
に - ni
ぬ - nu
ね - ne
の - no
Please note that each character actually contains a vowel sound from the first week's set (a i u e o).
Excersizes:
- worksheets 12-17
3. Basic Vocabulary
This week's vocabulary list consists entirely of words that can be constructed from the 25 hiragana you've already learned.
たぬき － tanuki - tanuki, racoon dog (noun)
ちかい － chikai - close, nearby (adjective)
きつね － kitsune - fox (noun)
ちかてつ － chikatetsu - subway (noun)
とき － toki - time (noun)
なつ － natsu - summer (noun)
にく － niku - meat (noun)
ぬの － nuno - cloth (noun)
ねつ － netsu - fever (noun)
つの － tsuno - horn (noun)
= Plural =
In most cases, Japanese nouns do not have plural forms. Unlike English, the same word in Japanese tends to be both singular and plural.
ie. one きつね two きつね
one たぬき two たぬき
Because of this, Japanese words should NEVER take "s" plurals even when used in the context of English. 1 anime, 2 anime... 1 manga, 2 manga... 1 samurai 2 samurai... 1 ronin 2 ronin... etc.
So the next time you ask someone about their favorite "animes", smack yourself... HARD. Nothing makes it more evident that you CAN'T speak Japanese than constantly using the English s-plural with Japanese words.
Excersizes:
- pronunciation drills with the sound files included in this pack
- write each word 5 times in hiragana
Recommended Study Regimen:
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Day 1: read the lesson and complete all activities
Day 2-5: repeat worksheets 11-17 and pronunciation drills
Day 6: test yourself with flashcards, review for quiz
Day 7: Quiz
Fun Semi-Relevant Media of the Week:
Do some pronunciation drills with this guy:
YouTube - The JPN Podcast - Hiragana a to ko - Episode 3
YouTube - The Jpn Video Podcast - Hiragana sa to no - Episode 4
Be careful with Youtube!!
While there's a lot of great stuff on there, there's even more bad stuff. Use your head when choosing media to rely on! If the author of the video tutorial you're watching is a 15 year old white girl from Kansas in a Sailor Moon t-shirt, she's probably not someone you should be considering an expert in the language. Remember - on the internet, EVERYONE'S an "expert".
