Hey guys and girls!

Ever seen a person seeking for a party without any indication as to what language they speak, and find they only want to party with Japansese talking people? Well worry no more! with my on-going thread I will teach you the ins and outs of some japanese phrases!

I will go onto Vent to help pronounciate and to help with spoken language too!

OK hope that you all like it and talk to me ingame about it !

I want to learn Kryii!!! When will we start

There is four different type of writing systems in japanese, these are; Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana, and Romaji. Kanji is much harder as it is a symbol to represent a whole entire word or words which unfortunately i dont know all about as of yet! BUT here are the symbols used in Japanese.

But before we start on the symbols... i have to get one thing out of the way... PRNOUNCIATION!!! its much different from speaking English... and well, to be honest, if you keep getting it wrong when and if we practice over vent/skype i will have to shout...

Vowels.
Japanese has five basic vowels, usually referred to as short vowels, which are romanised as a, i, u, e and o. These are pronounced approximately like the "a" in "Father" the "ee" in "feet", the "oo" in "mood" the "e" in "Met" and the "o" in "fort", respectively. They are all pronounced in a relatively short, clipped manner in contrast to the so-called "long vowels", which are produced by drawing out the sounds of the short vowels to approximately twice thier normal length. In the Hepburn system writes the long vowels corresponding to a,u and o are written by placing a macron over those letters, producing ā, ū, and ō. The Hepburn system writes the long vowels for i and e in two ways: in words borrowed from languages other than Chinese, they are written with a macron as ī and ē; otherwise they are written as ii and ei, respectively.

(The actual pronunciation of ē, or ei, varies considerably: some speakers pronounce it as an elongation of the short vowel e, others as a sequence of the short vowels e and i)

Other vowel combinations, aside from the long vowels ii and ei are pronounced as a sequence of the two vowels, though sometimes with a glide between them. such vowel combinations as ai, au, oi and ue often sound like "eye," "ow" (as in "Cow"), "oy" (as in "Boy") and "We" (as in "Wet") to the ear of the English speaker. The contrast between ai and ae is important. The former ends in a sound like the "ee" of "feet" and the latter in sound like the "e" of "met".
The vowel u in the syllable su thends to be pronouced very faintly or not at all (so that the syllable sounds like s) before some consonants, as in sukoshi ("A little bit") and at the end of some words, as in the polite copula desu and the polite verb suffix (ending) -masu. These examples are othen pronouced "skoshi," "des," and "mas"

The vowel i also has a tendency to be pronouced very faint;y or evn whipsered in certain context, especially in the syllable "shi," but also in the syllables chi, hi, ki and pi. This muting of the i sounds most commonly occurs when shi, chi, hi, ki or pi precedes any of the following consonants: ch, f, h, k, p, s, sh, t or ts. For example, shikata (way, method) is often pronounced "shkata" and hito (person, human being) is often prnounced in the way that sounds like "hto" or "shto" to most English speakers. However Japanese speakers hear the i, as it is whispered rther than dropped entirely. These pronounciation patterns are widespread, but they are seldom indicated in dictionaries and textx books. They are best learned by observing the speech of native speakers!! (or me over vent lol)

Consonants
Most Japanese consonants are pronounced more or less the way the same letters would be prnounced in English. However, there are some important differences!
1) The combination ch is always pronounced as in "Chair", never as in "Charactrt" or "Charade"!
2) The letter g is always pronounced as in "gift" or "get," never as in "ginger" or "generation."
3) The ts of the syllable tsu corresponds to nothing in English. IT sounds rather like the "ts" of "footsore"; however, it is really a single consonant, and it always beings the syllable in which it occurs.
4) The f of the syllable fu often sounds more like a "h" than like an English "f." (It is produced more by narrowing tyhe gap between the upper and lower lips rather than by bringin the upper teeth close to the lower lip as in English.) A glance at the table of Japanese Syllables will show that fu belongs to the h row.
5) The Japanese r is not at all like the retroflex American "r," in which the tongue is rolled back, then forwards. Instead it is produced by flapping the tip of the tongue downwards from just behind the upper frount teeth. It often sounds very much like an "L" to English speakers. Aside from this, Japanese has no "L" sound, and the r is used in pronouncing foreign loanwards that contain the letter "L" (such as the well known "JP ONRY" phrase)
6) The letter y that appears after some consonants is a glide between the consonant and the following vowel rather than a vowel as it sometimes is in English. Thus tōkyō (the name of the city), which is often pronounced in English as three syllables (to-ky-o), is actually two syllables in Japanese! (tō and kyō)
7) The n has two pronunciations. One is at the beggining of the syllables, na, ni, nu, ne and no, where it is pronounced like the English "n." THe other is the so-called syllabic n. THis is a nasalized "n" sometimes decribed as always coming at the end of a syllable. However, the nasalized "n" is counted as a syllable by itself, so that the word kin (gold) consists of two syllables (ki and n). The word nan (what) contains both types of n. WHen the syllabic n comes before a vowel (or the glide y) within a word, it is important to distinguish it from the syllable-beginning type. IN speech, there is a break between this n and the following vowel. In the Hepburn system, it is often marked with an apostrophe, as in kan'en (hepatitis), and this guide follows that practice.

Double Consonants
When a word contains double consonants, for example, the two "p's" in kippu (ticket), the two are pronounced spearately with a break between them rather than as a single consonant. In this case, the two "p's" are pronounced like those in "hip pocket" and not like those in "hippie." In the same way, the two "k's" of gakkō (school) are pronounced like the "kc" of "bookcase" and noe likt the "k" of "bookies."
Other such consonant pairs are ss, tt and nn. In this guidem the two "n's" of nn are separated by an apostrophe, as in "kan'nen" (idea, sense), since the first of the pir is the syllabic n.
The consonant combinatin "tch" as in itchi (accord), also has a break between the "t" and the "ch," being pronounced like the "tch" in "hatcheck" and not like that in "hatchet".

Pronuciation of Foreign Words
As can be seen from the japanese tables, the typical Japanese syllables consists of either a vowel alone or a consonant (or consonant plus glide) followed by a vowel. Aside from the doubbling of certain consonants and the frequest appearance of syllabic n before other consonants, Japanese has few consonant clusters, especially compared to English and some other European Languages. As a result, when a loanword from English (as pronounced in English) contains a succession of consonants, its pronounciation in Japanese often requires a vowel between the consonants. This pronunciation is of course reflected when such words are romanized. For example, pronounciation of the word "illustration" in Japanese requires inserion of a vowel between "s" and "t" and between "t " and "r" trsulting in irasutorēshon.
Japanese also has a few vowel sounds compared to English, and one Japanese vowel often has tp dp the work of several English ones. The Japanese a is used to represent the English short "u," as in the example above, and the Japanese long ā is often used for both short English "a" of "fast" and the rather different vowel sound of English "first."
Japanese does not have a "v" sound, and so English "v" becomes "b" in borrowed words. For example, "Vest" and "best" are both pronounced (and romanized) as besuto. Although there is no "v" in rōmaji, the constant influc of foreign words into Japanese is so great that many consonant sounds that were previously nonexistent are being gradually addd to both spoken Japanese and the rōmaji alphabet. For example, ti and tī are not commonly used for such borrowed words as tisshū (tissue) and aisu-tī (iced tea). Since modern Japanese orginally lacked the "f" sound of English, some earlier loanwords using this sound were given an approximate pronunciation, as in the case of kōhi for "coffee." More recently, however, such syllables as fa, fi, fe and fo have gained currency, especially among younger people.


Ok thats the pronounciation parts ALL DONE!!! Thanks for reading all of this! haha (it will help you learn the wonderful art of Japanese much better!)