New to Japanese. Please help!

[Baleeka]

I just recently decided to begin study of the Japanese languge, and I'm confused about a few things. First of all, out of what I have learned so far, a lot of the Japanese words and phrases can be written and have several meanings. Also, there are several diferent ways to write one word, but in diferent contexts. How am I supposed to interpret a word that can be used as diferent things? If I interpret it incorectly, the sentence won't be right.
My second question is about Kanji and Kana transcripts. I haven't studied either of them, so I don't know what the diference between them is. I have also heard people mention other transcripts? When I see kanji and kana side-by-side they look the same to me.

Thanks in advance to anyone who replys!

[kc8ufv]

Don't be too afraid. There are no languages where a single word doesn't have many meanings. You will learn to understand the context, and instinctively know which meaning is correct. Also remember that there is not a 1:1 exchange in the definition of words between languages, even loan words. Words will be either more general, more specific, or shifted slightly in their meaning.

[Baleeka]

Domo arigatou gozaimasu!

[Taurus]

My second question is about Kanji and Kana transcripts. I haven't studied either of them, so I don't know what the diference between them is. I have also heard people mention other transcripts? When I see kanji and kana side-by-side they look the same to me.

There are three types of writing used in Japanese. The first two are like phonetic alphabets (ie. each written character represents a different vocal sound). Together they are called kana. Separately they are called hiragana and katakana. The third type of writing is kanji. These are the same characters that are used in Chinese languages, and each one essentially represents a particular word. They're almost like little pictograms.

Typically, kanji are used for most Japanese words; hiragana are used for some other Japanese words, and for particles and word endings and so on (so they might attach to the end of a kanji to convey a certain meaning); and katakana are used for words that the Japanese have borrowed from other languages (like the word 'arubaito', which means part-time job, and comes from the German word 'arbeit').

Japanesepod provides three types of transcript. The kanji transcripts contain kanji, but kanji can be difficult to learn, so there's also a kana transcript, which is easier for beginners to understand. If, however, you haven't learnt kana yet, there's also the romaji transcript, which uses the western alphabet to spell out the words. But it's a really good idea to try to learn kana early on, because sometimes romaji can be more tricky to understand (in my opinion anyway).

But that's really a rough overview. You will pick all of this stuff up as your studies progress, but if you want to read more, you could look up kanji and kana on wikipedia.

[Baleeka]

Thank you very much!

[WalterWills]

May I advise you to learn Hiragana and Katakana as soon as possible- it's not hard, it just takes a bit of time, and even though it's easy you'll still impress your friends!

Also, with "Romaji": ローマ字

ローマ　＝　Rome/Roman (katakana)
字　＝　じ　(The Kanji for "character/letter")

With Romaji, it's not a good system because it often doesn't differentiate between づ and ず, which are both written as "zu" in Romaji, so you might spell つづける as つずける, like I used to do the time thanks to my grammar book written entirely in Romaji. Regardless of that, the Japanese rarely write in Romaji anyway.

IMO there's no "special" method needed for learning the Kana, just keep writing out words in Hiragana/Katakana until か looks like "ka" and ツ looks like "tsu" in the same way that we are completely familiar with the letters of our own alphabet (if you know what I mean!)


If you're serious about learning Japanese, just keep with it and it gradually begins to make sense!