Japanese Lessons #5: [Software] - Zkanji

 
Konnichiwa Minna-san!

It’s been a while since I last posted a Japanese lesson. Today, I’m also not going to write any Japanese lesson but don’t feel bad.

I’m going to introduce a software that I believe is a must-have for those who are studying the Japanese language. It is called Zkanji. Don’t fuss, it isn’t all about kanji. It’s an English-Japanese-English dictionary. Not only that, it also have a Kanji writing recognition feature, sample sentences and study mode feature.

Wow, this article has been pending for like 30 minutes because I was trying to figure out how to make zapgrab work in Vista. Haha.

Anyways, let’s continue.

Here’s how Zkanji would look like when you open it.

Looks a bit scary because of the Kanji, eh?

Japanese Lessons #4: Copula

Konnichiwa!

“desu” is the polite form while “da” is the plain form. It is equivalent to is, am and are in English. “A wa B da/desu” mean “A is B” or “As for A, it is B”.

The table below is the summary of the forms of the copula “desu/da”:

	non-past	negative non-past	past	negative past
Plain	だ da	ではない・じゃない dewa nai / ja nai	だった datta	ではなかった・じゃなかった dewa nakatta / janakatta
Polite	です desu	ではありません・ じゃありません dewa arimasen / ja arimasen	でした deshita	ではありませんでした・ じゃありませんでした dewa arimasen deshita / ja arimasen deshita

Let’s have some examples:

Japanese Lessons #3: Greetings 「あいさつ」

Now let's learn basic Japanese greetings! Greetings are very important so be sure to know the basics *:.｡☆..｡.(´∀｀人)

おはよう
Ohayou
Good Morning
*Casual way of saying good morning. It is used between family members and friends.

おはようございます
Ohayou Gozaimasu
Good Morning (polite)
*Polite way of saying good morning. It is used between people with higher status and less intimate acquaintances.

Japanese Lessons #2: Basic Sentence Structure

The word order of a Japanese sentence is different from English. In Japanese, the verb is normally placed at the end of the sentence. Japanese is a Subject-Object-Verb language while English is a Subject-Verb-Object language.

Japanese basic sentence structure:
S - O - V

友達が映画を見ました。
ともだちがえいがをみました
Tomodachi ga eiga wo mimashita.
(Friend movie watched)

tomodachi - subject
eiga - object
mimashita - verb

English basic sentence structure:
S - V -O

My friend watched a movie.

friend - subject
watched - verb
movie - object

Vocabulary:
tomodachi - friend
eiga - movie
mimashita - past tense of miru (to see, to watch, to look, to view)

Japanese Lessons #1: Writing System

There are three kinds of Japanese writing system namely Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. Katakana are used to write foreign or loan words from other languages. Hiragana are used to write all the other Japanese words and Kanji are used to write nouns (including names) and stem of adjectives and verbs.

I would recommend studying Hiragana and Katakana first. It would be really helpful in studying vocabulary and grammar. But of course, it still depends on which you find it easier. Once you get the hang of it, you could now start with Kanji, which requires a lot of hard work.

I would also recommend writing the characters on paper as much as you could even though writing on paper is seldom used already because of computers.

Have fun studying!