Japanese Professor

I’ve added a complete Hiragana chart (including voiced, combination, doubled sounds) and flashcard list (for computer flashcard programs) to Hiragana and Katakana, which is now top level lesson page. I’ll leave a link in the reference section of the intro materials.

The Hiragana links and downloads are basically complete (though not quite comprehensive), and Katakana stuff will be added when I get to writing the Katakana guide, which will now be the last section of Introduction to the Japanese Language.

The last couple days turned out to be busier than I thought they would be, so I wasn’t able to get out the next lesson. I’ll try to be more careful about implying that new content will be out soon when in reality my schedule is uncertain. But for the following week I do intend to spend several hours a day writing, rather than fiddling around with stuff. Although, I need to start adding meta descriptions to the lesson pages (to replace page excerpts in search engine results).

As of today, the writing and pronunciation portion of the introduction is now complete. More on Pronunciation covers the last of what you need to know in order to start speaking Japanese. I’ve also updated the beginning of Hiragana and the Japanese Sound System, providing links to related content.

I also found a couple some Hiragana practice worksheets I like, so I’ve added those to Kana Resources.

I’m thinking that it’s about time to at least start up the other parts of the site, so I might start working on that along with the grammar portion of the intro series.

I’ve whipped up a couple charts for the basic Hiragana. You can download them from Hiragana and Katakana. Other Kana charts coming soon.

I also found one good stroke order guide online. I’d make my own if my handwriting was better.

I’ll keep adding links as I find good sites.

Part 1 of Hiragana and the Japanese Sound System introduced the concept of the “mora” along with the basic characters and their pronunciations. Part 2 will teach you everything else you need to know at a high level in order to write Hiragana. Romanization covered as well. I”m already thinking of revising part 1 to remove the IPA symbols and keep the pronunciation explanations more basic for the first exposure.

Future supporting material:

• Kana charts
• Issues in pronunciation – rhythm, intonation, and vowel devoicing (Part 2 of Hiragana was getting too long)
• How to type in Japanese
• Links to information on how to write the actual characters (stroke order, etc), since this is something others have done well enough
• Further reading and FAQs

I’m also thinking of possibly whipping up some Hiragana and Katakana worksheets to accompany the lessons. There are workbooks available though, so I might use that as my starting place for the Books section.

The next big item on my to-do list is basic grammar, which I’m going to approach more carefully and outline first. Like Hiragana, it will probably be split into multiple sections.

Hiragana and the Japanese Sound System, part 1, covering syllable structure and the 46 basic characters, is now available. Part 2 will cover derived sounds, romanization, and rhythm and pitch.

I’ve decided to reorganize the introductory lessons. Up already is an overview of The Japanese Writing System, soon to be followed by a guide to Hiragana and the Japanese sound system. The phonetics article will work better as an in depth follow-up, and I’ll also be finishing up that soon as well. Trouble with CSS table formatting and an imperfect tables plugin wasted a lot of time today.

I may or may not keep Katakana with the rest of the super-basics. On the one hand, it will take most people a couple weeks to get a handle on Hiragana, but on the other hand I like the idea of introducing borrowed words as soon as possible. Either way, grammar fundamentals and levels of formality will get at least one lesson each.

If the last two days have taught me anything, it’s that this type of writing is slow. It take as lot of work to verbalize knowledge that I learned years ago, and I’m also checking my information as I go.

More to come tomorrow!

The first page in the Lessons section, The Language of Japan, is now complete. I’ll probably revise, and perhaps expand this and the rest of the Introduction to the Japanese Language series later on, but for now I’m just trying to get stuff up as quickly as possible.

The basic format of the site is now in place, so now I’m working on introductory materials so that when I get to the good stuff I’ll be able to say “if you don’t already know this, this, and this, look here, here, and here” instead of duplicating watered down information all over the place. That’s the simple, beautiful thing about web content as learning material: it’s easy to send you straight to the prerequisite material for any particular topic.

This current project will take a week or so to finish, assuming I spend half of each day writing. Kana lessons might get included in this. I haven’t decided yet, but the next thing I’ll probably work on will be whipping out some sort of “guide for beginners” on what books and sites to use and so on. I’m curious to see how fast traffic grows. If it happens to be fast, I’d like to have enough to keep the newbies entertained while I work on some initial general interest stuff and start up the Kanji and review/recommendation sections, about page, and so on.

That’s all for today. My phonetics lesson is half written, soon to be followed by the rest of the super-basics.