User:Csgray1414/Imabi

第1課: Pronunciation

 * Pronunciation is the most important part of learning a language.
 * Each syllable is pronounced with the same amount of time just like a beat.
 * When a word has two vowels side by side, you don’t fuse them together. Speakers hear them as being separate. Exception: いう is actually pronounced as ゆう.
 * えい is normally pronounced as a long え, but it can always be pronounced separately. Similarly, おう is often a long お, but sometimes pronounced separately.
 * っ doubles the length of a consonant, making it sound harder. It may also show an audible stop at the end of a word.
 * Words are often distinguished by pitch. Knowing the basics will make you sound more natural. It’s important to learn the pitch of new words by imitating others.

第2課: Kana I: ひらがな Hiragana

 * The Japanese writing system is composed of three different systems.
 * Two are called Kana (Hiragana and Katakana), and they correspond to individual syllables/sounds of Japanese.
 * ひらがな is used for words not written in かんじ, except loan words.
 * かな that show conjugation are called おくりがな.
 * ふりがな are かな used to show how かんじ are read.
 * There are no spaces because the grammar makes word boundaries obvious.
 * The period is ., the comma is 、, and the quotation marks are 「」.

第3課: Kana II: カタカナ Katakana

 * Katakana was once referred to as おとこで (men’s hand) because it was primarily used by educated men.
 * The sounds in Katakana are the same as ひらがな.
 * ヲ is rarely used because the sound is typically just for the particle を (which is usually written in ひらがな). In loanwords, the sound “wo” is written as ウォ.
 * ヱ and ヰ are obsolete Kana and were once pronounced as “we” and “wi”. Today, they are read as “e” and “i” respectively.
 * As Japanese doesn’t allow final consonants or consonant clusters with exception to ン, vowels are inserted. U is often inserted, but o is used after t and d.
 * カタカナ is used for some Japanese companies.
 * カタカナ is also used to write onomatopoeia (sound words) and stylistically by authors to italicize words.

第4課: Kana III: Basic Kana Orthography

 * Not all words are written out exactly how they sound in Japanese
 * Long vowels are crucial to speaking and writing Japanese properly.
 * いい is often accidentally shortened by foreigners.
 * えい in Sino-Japanese words (Kango) is typically pronounced as a long え sound. However, it can be pronounced separately. This is common in singing.
 * In non-Sino-Japanese words, えい is never a long え.
 * おう is pronounced separately when at the end of a verb or when the vowels are separated as readings of Kanji next to each other. Otherwise, おう is pronounced as a long お.
 * For カタカナ, long vowels are typically represented with a mark that looks similar to a hyphen.
 * Small かな--ぁ,ぃ,ぅ,ぇ,ぉ—represent trailing. You may see these at the end of sentences to show a trailing off effect.
 * Audible (glottal) stops may be written with っ.
 * Most vowel-initial words in Japanese actually begin with a glottal stop.
 * し and す are voiced as じ and ず. つ and ち are voiced as ぢ and づ. However, づ and ぢ are pronounced the same as ず and じ.
 * づ and ぢ are never used phonetically. They are typically used in compounds in which つ or ち is the initial sound of the second element and subsequently becomes voiced. Another instance is when a sound gets doubled and voiced at the same time.
 * Words normally don't begin with づ or ぢ.

第5課: 漢字

 * かんじ (漢字) are Chinese characters used in written Japanese.
 * 漢字 have meaning(s) and sound(s) attributed to them.
 * Each character has a stroke order that you should memorize.
 * 2,136 漢字 are じょうよう漢字 (general use characters), but most speakers know 3,000+ characters.
 * By learning characters in context, you will better 漢字.
 * オン readings are pronunciations borrowed into Japanese from Chinese.
 * くんよみ are native readings attributed to characters by semantic association with native words.
 * Educated guessing will be the best skill that you'll get out of analyzing how reading 漢字 works.
 * Radicals are the building blocks of characters. All 漢字 are composed with one or more of the 214 radicals.
 * 漢字 with similar radicals usually have similar meanings.
 * Some radicals are used for phonetic purposes and can hint at what the オン reading is supposed to be.
 * Even as you reasonably progress, you will come across many words that have irregular readings and meanings.

第6課: The 10 Major Aspects

 * The subject is typically followed by the object, and the verb is always last.
 * A なかぐろ (中黒), ・, is placed in between two uncommon foreign words.
 * Conjugation is done via chains of endings.
 * Japanese relies a lot on part of speech and context to distinguish homophones.
 * Only verbs, adjectives, and auxiliary verbs can conjugate.
 * Particles show grammatical function and are always after what the modify.
 * Describing emotion is put into words more explicitly in Japanese than in English.
 * There are no spaces between words, and you write to the next line even if this breaks up a word.
 * Commas are often where particles are omitted.

第7課: Nouns & Pronouns

 * Nouns are the easiest words to learn in a foreign language.
 * Nouns in Japanese have no number or gender, and there are no articles.
 * You can generally use ～たち to make things plural when talking about a group of things/people.
 * Loanwords are Japanese words now, so don't use English pronunciations.
 * Outside of polite speech, わたし (私) sounds slightly feminine.

第8課: だ & です

 * The most fundamental kind of sentence is "X is Y".
 * Japanese has plain and polite speech.
 * だ is replaced with です in polite speech.
 * Japanese has two basic tenses: non-past and past.
 * Non-past refers to the present or future depending on context.
 * The non-past is just the base form

第9課: The Particles が & は
It's complicated