Settling Down with ひらがんあ

Yes, I did disappear for a little bit.

I bet you were thinking: "Ha! She already lost interest in Japanese, just one month after the earthquake! She couldn't hack it!"

Ha-ha right back at ya! :) (While bowing politely of course!)

Actually, I have been a good がくせい and I have been exploring a variety of Japanese textbooks, online learning sites, iPhone apps, etc. since I last posted. I have been hard at work my first month sorting out how I am going to learn Japanese.

Japanese is a monster of a language -- a L5 out of a L1-5 scale of difficulty (um...no, 1 is not the hardest, sorry to say!) according to the State Department, so I think having a good plan is wise when doing the tango with Japanese.

So I have had to figure out:

• To take a face-to-face-course, or to not
• To take an online course, or to not
• To pay for a course, or to not
• To Romanji, or to not...(lots about that another day!)

The only thing I am really guilty of is that I have not been writing on my Japanese learning blog, which is a major bummer for you, and not good for me, so Tsk! Tsk! on me.

I have been hard at work studying my Japanese too. Specifically, I have been revisiting my ひらがんあ。As I stated in my first post, I did learn a bit of ひらがんあ with the help of several Japanese students I had the pleasure of teaching a few years back.

I made it through the main kana but I was always very shaky with the だくてん, the double consonants (small つ), the long vowels, and the combo ひらがんあ: よおおん (I'm not sure I spelled that right!). So this time around, I have been working on the quirky ひらがんあ very diligently.

I have been practicing by using ひらがんあ flashcards, writing ひらがんあ worksheets (compliments of TextFugu), and by reading words written in ひらがんあ out loud.

Here are what I find are the 'tricky bits' with learning the ひらがんあ:

The hardest ひらがんあ to pronounce:

• ら
• り
• る
• れ
• ろ

The trickiest ひらがんあ to remember how to pronounce (at least for me):

• ぢ
• じ
• づ

And of course, I am baffled as to when to use:

• ぢ vs. じ、or 
• ず vs. づ

Finally, the trickiest ひらがんあ to tell apart when reading:

• ぬ vs. め
• ね vs. れ

I'm sure the answers will come soon enough!

~Happy, Happy Japanese Learning to You!~