Welcome to Elementary Japanese

Elementary Japanese へようこそ

We strive to teach you the best in elementary Japanese! If you only know the basics, or are just learning Japanese, then you have come to the right place!

Learn Japanese Writing!

There are three different scripts used in Japanese writing known as Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji uses a style of Chinese writing, so usually people from China, Korea, and other languages that use Kanji can understand kanji.

Both Hiragana and Katakana are syllabic and also are a form of modified Chinese. There is also a Latin alphabet known as rōmaji. Romaji is mostly used in names of companies and logos. It can even be used in modern Japanese.

Arabic numerals are generally used for numbers around Japan, but Sino-Japanese numerals are traditional and also common.

It may seem super complicated, but it is not! And here at Elementary Japanese we will break it down in a fun and easy way!

We recommend that first you study Hiragana, which is also the first alphabet children in Japan learn. You can learn about the history of Hiragana, as well as download Hiragana study worksheets. As with Katakana, each symbol has a sound, such as the Roman alphabet. So quickly you will learn how to read both of these alphabets!

Katakana is very similar to Hiragana in the type of sounds each symbol represents. Katakana, however, is used for foreign words. It is usually the second alphabet to learn, after Hiragana.

With our great cheat sheet you will pick up both Hiragana and Katakana in no time at all! Once you got these alphabets down, its time to learn some phrases and vocabulary!

Learn some Phrases

Phrases are a great way to start learning a language. We have a list of great phrases to get you started!

Japanese Vocabulary

Vocabulary is important in any language. Check out these great vocabulary lists!

About Japanese

Japanese is not only a language but a culture, a way of life, and one of the world's main business languages. Over 130 million people speak Japanese known as hyōjungo. Japanese may be one of the most polite and formal languages and has an extensive grammatical system to express it. It is spoken in all parts of Japan but it is also used in parts of Korea, Taiwan and various Pacific islands. (In these areas, it's spoken mostly by elderly people.) Modern Japanese comes from the Edo (now known as Tokyo) dialect.

Japanese is an agglutinative language, meaning that it forms words by joining morphemes together. What are morphemes you ask? That is the smallest meaningful unit of a language.

It is a mora-timed language, instead of being stress timed (English) or syllable timed (French, Italian, Spanish). A mora-timed language means that a vowel and a constant vowel have the same timing unit.