Can't believe it's been so long since I've posted an update on my progress! Truth be told, there hasn't been much, but it seems like there has. I've pretty much gotten the Hiragana syllabary down to where I can recognize a kana character, romanize it, and say it out loud pretty accurately. I still slip up on a few of them, specifically ま(ma),ほ (ho), and は (ha), since the three look pretty similar.
But besides that part of the process (which kinda took longer than I thought it would), I've been slow to start on Katakana because I keep worrying that I'll mix the two "alphabets" up. As a brief recap, Hiragana is the "alphabet" used to write out Japanese things and phrases in Japanese. I say "Japanese things" because you cannot write out foreign words like America, England, or Canada in Japanese without using the secondary alphabet, Katakana. So, America becomes Amerika becomes アメリカ, England becomes Igirisu becomes イギリス, Canada becomes Kanada becomes カナダ.
As a comparison: アメリカ (America) written in Hiragana instead of Katakana looks like this: あめりか. It's basically their way of adopting foreign words into their written language, much in the same way we romanize and italicize theirs.
Now, Kanji, on the other hand, has been both interesting and daunting. If you want to write out a noun or an adjective, you just do it. Book, ball, red, king, shellfish, serenity. Kanji takes words like that and translates them into (sometimes) single, complex characters that it seems like you'd need to be an artist to reproduce. "Book" becomes 本 which also means other things, too, apparently. "King" becomes 王. It's kinda crazy!
So, that's pretty much where I'm at. I'm also messing around with grammar, which has been fun. I picked up an Android app called Human Japanese that's been working wonders for me. If you have an interest in the language and want to start with something closer to Rosetta Stone rather than a textbook, that's definitely the way to go. Can't recommend it enough so far.
Mata ne!
I was watching a Japanese film the other day and I was wondering if you'd have been able to translate much of it. :)
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