I have begun seriously studying Japanese in preparation for my summer experience. I am studying with “An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese GENKI”.
Foreign languages are hard enough to learn, however, Japanese has two alphabets to learn. The two alphabets are Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana was adapted from Chinese, before Japanese had a written system. Katakana is used when writing foreign words. I still don’t understand exactly why there are two alphabets, possibly so that people can tell if a word is new and foreign rather than traditional. Hopefully I will figure this out during my stay in Japan.
During my study session this morning I reviewed over the two alphabets, and moved on to greetings. That being said I only remember a few characters.
Of the greetings that I learned this morning my favorite word is ただいま which means ‘I’m home’. The reason that it is my favorite word this morning is due to a combination of pronunciation and meaning. ただいま is pronounced tadaima and as I said above means ‘I’m Home’. I can’t help but imagine someone coming home and saying TaDa. It just makes me laugh. TaDa-ima.