Beginner's course aims Introduction of 3 fundamental Japanese characters

1. Japanese Lesson for Beginners
Session 1
13.Oct.2014
Kana Shimohigoshi
kshimo@essex.ac.uk

2. Beginners’ Course Aims
- Speaking basic conversation
- Reading/Writing basic Japanese letters
(e.g. Hiragana and hopefully Katakana)
- Introducing a part of Japanese cultures
- Making friends who have the same interests
- Getting your partner of language exchange

4. Sharing your experiences/interests
(For general students)
-Name
-Nationality
-What do you study?
-Why do you want to learn
Japanese?
-Have you learnt Japanese
before? How long?
-What made you have an
interests in Japan?
-What do you hope to gain
from this class?
(For JP students)
-Name
-Where are from in Japan?
-What do you study?
-What does make you feel
happy to have been born
Japanese?
-Introduce what is like your
hometown

5. What is Japanese?
Japanese language uses 3 characters, besides
the Arabic Numerals and the Roman alphabet.
Hiragana（ひらがな）
Katakana（カタカナ）
Kanji（漢字）

6. ノルウェイの森(1987)
村上春樹
“「私のヘアスタイル、好き？」
「すごく良いよ」
「どれくらい良い？」と緑が訊いた。
「世界中の森の木が全部倒れるくらい素晴らしいよ」
と僕は言った。”
“「どれくらい私のこと好き？」と緑が訊いた。
「世界中のジャングルの虎がみんな溶けてバターになって
しまうくらい好きだ」と僕は言った。”

7. Norwegian Wood (1987)
Haruki Murakami
“Like my hairstyle?’ she asked.
‘It’s great.’
‘How great?’
‘Great enough to knock down all the forests of the world.’ I said.”
“How much do you love me?’ Midori asked.
‘Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,’ I said.”

8. Kanji
漢字
- Most complicated character in Japanese
- Chinese origin words
- Exists over 40,000 kanji
- About 2,000 are commonly used in Japan
- Each one has a meaning
- Can have many meanings frequently
- Content words, such as nouns, adjectives and
verbs

9. Hiragana
ひらがな
- The basic Japanese phonetic characters
- There are 46 hiragana symbols
- Represents every sound
- Do not have meaning
- Creating grammatical structure, such as
particles, conjunctions, prefixes, suffixes, and
many adverbs

10. Katakana
カタカナ
- Represents the same set of phonetic sounds
as Hiragana
- Phonetic characters for foreign words
- Onomatopoeia (seen in manga)