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.