Lesson 1: Basic Japanese Scripts

Okay, Time for Lesson number 1: What is the basics of Japanese?!
I'm sure you have at one point in your life, looked at an Asian language and wondered how in the hell they can understand it. I did the exact same thing when I started learning Japanese 3 years ago. It boggled my mind how many symbols could be read 3 or more different ways! I almost quit from the very start...
Until I realised I just had to work at it. Hard work brings your entire work ethic up and if you're willing to spend your free time to learn something useful,  it will help your learn more efficiently and much faster.
So: Basic Japanese Scripts.
Japanese is made up of three separate scripts that are used for different purposes. There is Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.

Hiragana is a set of 46 central symbols that each represent a sound that does not change. Then some can be combined to make other sounds.
Hiragana is used to write words that come from the natural Japanese language.
Examples:
あ　い　う　え　お　These are the first 5 Hiragana symbols, the vowels. All of the other sounds are based of these central five vowels, except for one.
So the rest would be:
か　き　く　け　こ、These are the basic 46 sounds, as follows: ka, ki, ku, ke, ko   
さ　し　す　せ　そ、sa shi su se so
た　ち　つ　て　と、ta chi tsu te to
な　に　ぬ　ね　の、na ni nu ne no
は　ひ　ふ　へ　ほ、ha hi fu he ho
ま　み　む　め　も、ma mi mu me mo
ら　り　る　れ　ろ、ra ri ru re ro
や　　　ゆ　　　よ、ya yu yo
わ　　　　　　　を、wa     wo
ん                                    n
Then you have the blend sounds, which I'll do it a later lesson. I don't want to frazzle your mind too early.
Examples of hiragana words: 　いち：ichi, or 1.


So, katakana are the sharper, more lined symbols that stand for the same sounds as hiragana  but are used to write foreign words in Japanese.
ア 　イ　ウ　エ　オ　Again, these are the exact same five central vowels that are used.
The rest of the katakana are in the same order as above:
カ　キ　ク　ケ　コ
サ　シ　ス　セ　ソ
タ　チ 　ツ　テ　ト
ナ 　ニ　ヌ　ネ　ノ
ハ　ヒ　フ　ヘ　ホ
マ 　ミ　ム　メ　モ
ラ　リ　ル　レ　ロ
ヤ　　　ユ　　　ヨ
ワ　　　　　　　ヲ
ン
So as you can probably see, many of the symbols that represent the same sound look similar, albeit sharper and less soft.
Examples of katakana words:  イチ：　ichi, or 1.

So, that brings us to our final script: kanji. kanji is the most complex and daunting part of studying Japanese. Kanji are Chinese characters that have been adopted into the Japanese language in order to represent words, concepts or to add to a word.
I would write out all the kanji that are used in the Japanese language but I will confess: there are more than 4000 kanji symbols that are used and I don't feel like writing them all out today. :P
So I'll give you a few examples of how kanji can be used:
By itself:　　 一　：　one、ichi
In conjunction with hiragana:   一つ  ：　hitotsu, one (an alternate way to write it, only used in certain situations)
In conjunction with other kanji :  一月： ichigatsu: a combination of 'one' and 'moon'. Moon also then stands for 'month', as a month is one turn of the moon. The one then means 'first'. So it then becomes 'first month'. What is the first month? JANUARY! So, ichigatsu means January!

That concludes our first lesson and I hope to get the next few up soon!
The next lesson: Basic Japanese Grammar!
 Ja ne! (Japanese for a casual goodbye, 'cya' or see you!)
Claudia.