Ohaiyo, konichiwa, or konbanwa! (Depending on what time you are reading this!)
Greetings reader, one of the very first things I’ve learned when I started learning Japanese were greetings. This a great place to start!
Good morning = Ohayou おはよう
Good afternoon = Konichiwa こにちは
Good evening = Konbanwa こんばんは
In Learning Japanese 0 we introduced the writing system and it’s 3 styles: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. The characters written above are all hiragana because “ohaiyo”, “konichiwa”, and “konbanwa” are all native words. Katakana is used for foreign words like computer or television!
Computer = “konpyuta” = コンピュータ
Television = “terebi” = テレビ
What I like around the Japanese writing system is it’s simple pronunciation. We can write and read entire works written in solely hiragana or katakana! Commonly, text is written using all three (hiragana, katakana, kanji) in combination. From what I understand as of now the alternating usage of the three character sets is to separate words and sentences. There are no spaces in text on a single line. What an interesting method of writing!
Let’s end today’s post with a chart of hiragana characters and begin our journey to learn Japanese!
The order goes from left to right and top to bottom. Use the names of the objects in the tables to help you memorize!
Have fun learning hiragana! =]
Ganbate! がんばって！
Mata ne! またね！
Special thanks for Ken for the proofreading! = ]
