Demonstratives: the Ko-so-a-do Series covers an interesting collection of Japanese pronouns, adverbs, and modifiers. English has demonstratives too, like “this”, “that”, “here”, and “there”, but as usual Japanese is far more systematic.
At this, the first main section of the Beginning Lessons (after the preliminaries) is nearing completion. Wa and desu, nouns, and questions have all been covered; next is numbers. Parts 2 and 3 will focus on adjectives and verbs, respectively.
The Introduction to the Japanese Language series has now been fully integrated into the Beginning Lessons. Several new pages have been written, the top page reorganized, and “recommended background” and “what next?” sections added to all pages.
A Guide to Japanese Pronunciation is a brand new lesson briefly covering the pronunciation parts of Hiragana and the Japanese Sound System.
The following lessons are the result of the other revisions:
I still have some work left to do: finishing the link corrections (I set up redirects for the time being), revising the page on word classes, and going through everything I’ve written to refine it a bit. I may need to rewrite the lesson on politeness and formality, and add a lesson on polite speech since masu has been written out.
The new organization of the top page is somewhat different from before. I’m trying to show how the general progression of the lessons goes, while also suggesting that lessons at the same vertical position can be covered in a flexible order. I do have a flow chart offline for planning purposes; maybe if I can add links on top of that…
Ah, well, I hope the new organization makes more sense. The onslaught of new content should begin again within a couple days.
I’ve written the new pronunciation guide and expanded the intro lesson on writing. The other big changes I need to make is to reorganize the lessons relating to desu and nouns/pronouns/plurals. Then I’ll post everything and make the remaining changes.
I’ve decided to combine Introduction to the Japanese Language into the Beginning Lessons.
(You can read about the reasons behind this in the last post.)
It’s time I start revising the lessons I’ve written so far, so I might as well do my reorganization at the same time. Here are the expected changes:
| Old Intro/Beginning Lessons | New Beginning Lessons |
| The Language of Japan | Introduction to the Japanese Language (name change) |
| The Japanese Writing System
Hiragana and the Japanese Sound System More on Pronunciation |
Introduction to the Japanese Writing System
A Quick Guide to Japanese Pronunciation (new) Hiragana and the Japanese Sound System Pitch Accent and Vowel Devoicing (name change) |
| Levels of Formality
Names and Introductions Greetings and Other Expressions |
Politeness and Formality (add rank and honorifics)
Polite Speech (da/desu, dictionary/masu, contractions, bits of keigo) Names and Introductions (remove rank and honorifics) Greetings and Other Expressions |
| The Structure of a Japanese Sentence
The Topic Marker “Wa” “Desu” and “Masu” Using “Wa” and “Desu” |
The Structure of a Japanese Sentence
The Topic Marker “Wa” The Copula “Desu” (Masu will be covered with verbs) |
| Japanese Word Classes
Pronouns and Plurals |
Japanese Word Classes (more of an overview, leave out the details)
Nouns and Pronouns (still including plurals) |
Questions and Negation, Question Words, The Sentence Ending Particles “Ne” and “Yo”, and “No”, the Modifying Particle will be unchanged.
Because of link breakage, I’ll post the revised Intro lessons all at once when they are complete, and then revise the Beginning Lessons and fix all the links. The changes to the existing lessons are mostly organizational, so feel free to read the current versions now, and I’ll tell you which, if any, of the new versions should be reread.
So that there isn’t a complete halt to the new stuff, I might go ahead and work on a couple completely new lessons alongside – stuff that won’t be affected by the changes, like numbers and Kanji. Or I could add a few items to the links page each day. We’ll see.
Another longer lesson, “No”, The Modifying Particle explains this particle’s multiple uses as a modifier, first to create possessives (my, your) followed by the more general case.
Other uses of “no”, such as its use as a nominalizer (turning the preceding verb into a noun) will be covered in future lessons.
With about 17 lessons already written, I think it’s about time for a more detailed explanation of what’s coming over the next 6 weeks and beyond.
First, I’m starting to consider combining Introduction to the Japanese Language into the Beginning Lessons. I still want to make it obvious that the Intro series lessons are more in depth, but having just one contents page will make navigation easier, and it’s sometimes fuzzy whether a particular lesson should be in one section or the other. Links would be broken in the process, but this site is still too young for it to matter. (And I might learn how to set up redirects in the process.)
Regardless, after the next couple new lessons, I’m probably going to do some heavy editing of what I have, mainly for organization and clarity. I’ll also expand the “about” page significantly so that it’s clear why I’m doing things a the way I am.
Based on my current plan, the combined Beginning Lessons will likely end up with around 50 lessons, not including vocab pages and other short pieces. I still intend to use the “do as much as you can with just a couple of conjugations” approach, while fully explaining all the underlying grammar that we do use. There’s a lot you can do with very simple language.
To be clear, the beginning lessons will use simple sentence structures and very little verb conjugation, but I am not afraid of giving you the details you need to understand the grammar that is used. This is my primary issue with textbooks and teachers alike in all subjects: they’re afraid of scaring you with too much information, so they simplify things that shouldn’t be simplified and cut out details that can’t be cut out if you’re actually to understand anything.
Where things will get tricky is the beginner/intermediate beginner boundary. At some point you do need to start learning all the basic conjugations and using informal language; this isn’t terribly complicated in the grand scheme of things, but spending some time with just dictionary, masu, and te-form will help you ease into it. But it’s hard to decide what communicative functions (like describing the weather, giving directions) should be introduced early and what should wait. The more you learn in polite form only, the more you have to relearn later using plain form.
So the heavy grammar is coming, just not until after the beginning lessons. And even then, I intend to have more of a linguistically oriented theme: “Why does this mean what it does?” Because the great thing about language is that we can understand, and Japanese is no exception.
Just today, the WordPress editor started deleting Japanese text from my pages and posts when I try to save them. I haven’t been able to find an easy fix for the problem, so any new content is on hold, as are updates to existing pages. Sorry for the inconvenience, but thankfully all existing content should be safe.
Update:
With the upgrade to WP 3.2.1, it looks like the problem is fixed.
Question Words is a follow up to Questions and Negation, which focuses on yes-no questions.
The next couple of lessons will be about the possessive particle “no” and the ko-so-a-do series (this, that, here, there, etc.), followed by adjectives and compound sentences.
The new Basic Japanese Vocabulary page under Beginning Lessons includes some general vocabulary for beginners as well as links to particular categories of vocabulary covered on dedicated pages. A basic particle summary page is also in the works.
The Sentence Ending Particles “Ne” and “Yo” explains the other two sentence ending particles (along with “ka”) used in formal speech: when to use each, or both together. It also covers the “sou desu” category of expressions that are common in everyday speech.
