Let's start with the scarier part of the lesson... the 患者 (Kanji). People say it's the hardest, but it can actually be quite simple... if you can do it right. You see, to be considered 'literate' in Japanese, you would have to know around 2,000 of the most common 患者, meaning you could read newspapers and books without struggle.
And I KNOW this sounds hard, but hear me out.
It's not that they are all different letters you have to memorize: they are all words. If you go through a dictionary, there are thousands of words, correct? In the Webster dictionary, there are 470,000 words... and yet when you flip through the pages of a dictionary, you know most of those words ( or at least a decent portion), so when you look at it that way, it seems so much more simple, right?
Honestly, I could give you a really LONG lesson just on 患者 and how to learn them fast, but your best bet is Wanikani.com, which is how I have been learning 患者 (I am still learning... it takes a native Japanese person nearly 10 years to be "fluent" in 患者, so since I am not native and I am not learning from a school, I will learn a little faster, but it is still going to take a while). It is a free site that teaches you a few a day, starting with Radicals (the building blocks that make 患者), along with vocab. Please, just do it.
And although you will mostly be learning Radicals at first, trust me in that they are incredibly helpful. Each radical has a meaning of it's own, and by learning them, it can help you figure out the meaning of most of the 患者 they are in, which makes learning them even easier!
Okay, enough talk about the Japanese alphabet. Let's start working on some questions and answers...
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Let's start with some important grammar... the symbol か (pronounced "ka") is used to replace a question mark. NEVER place a question mark after it. It literally IS the question mark in Japanese.
For those who forgot, "Hiragana" is the first script of the alphabet you learned, and "Romanji" is a 'script' where English letters are used to show how a Japanese word is pronounced... I will be putting these in the parentheses as needed (hiragana only when there is Kanji), however by the tenth lesson I will stop using Romanji, since it is a bit of a crutch and actually makes it harder to memorize the Japanese characters, since you could just read the Romanji and call it good...
Also remember that any 'u' is silent unless otherwise stated.1040Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXFiSstaaG2
Anywho...
The question you will probably hear the most is お元気ですか (Hiragana: おげんきですか, Romanji: 'o genki desu ka'). It is used as a 'How are you?' however the literal translation is more like 'Are you well/healthy?'.
To say you are fine, you would simply say 元気です (Hiragana げんきです, Romanji: 'genki desu'). If you are not doing fine, the most common answer would be 元気じゃありません (Hiragana: げんきじゃありません, Romanji "genki ja arimasen"). 1040Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV4HDplLAew
If it is more so-so/in the middle, simply say ママです (Hiragana: ままです, Romanji: "mama desu").
Another common question you will be asked (or will ask yourself) is for someone's name. The most common way to ask this is "お名前なんですか" (Hiragana: おなまえなんですか, Romanji: 'o namae desu ka'), which is simply 'What is your name?'. However, in more casual conversations, you will most likely hear 名前は (Hiragana: なまえは, Romanji: 'namae wa').
Note that with these, and pretty much ANY Japanese phrase, can be made more casual by eliminating the です, AKA 'desu' at the end of a phrase. This isn't always the case, but for the most part this remains true.
Those are the two most common questions in Japanese. When you first meet someone, get a job, or any other similar situation, you will hear these two questions. If you have any ideas for the next lesson, have a question, or want 1-on-1 tutoring, just comment below or private message me! I also have a group called 'Bilingual: (or want to be)" and I am still looking for members... I only have two. So if you want to join, or know anyone who would like to, please send them over there!
Thanks for reading, see ya next time!
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