Welcome to Gaia! ::

　　I'm sorry for having to start over again, but I like to keep all of my information together and I didn't have enough room in my last thread. Keeping it all together helps me because my lessons are in need of constant revision as I learn new things and try to find better ways to explain things to a majority of people. When I explain things to my family they get it (most of the time) but when I use that same explanation with most other people, they tend not to get it so I have to completely rewrite it to try to make it more understandable for them. I hope you can bear with me on this.

　　I don't really think I'm a good teacher and I have a hard time explaining things the way I want to, but I'm trying to change that and what better way to do that than to try teaching y'all? Just a warning though: My courses can be intensive when reading a lesson all at once. It's just I go much faster than most so I hate when I get really short lessons that could explain more than they do.

　　I will teach Japanese to anyone interested. Hopefully my writing style will get better as I continue teaching, but in the meantime I am open to any comments/ideas/etc. you can give me. Please Pm any of them to me as, like I said, I like to keep my information together and don't know how many posts I will need. だんだんおーきん！(Thank you very much.) I'm also going to try to figure out how to teach you some of Japan's culture if I can ever find out some of it for myself.

　　Some notes before I start: Japanese characters take up a lot of space so I will need a lot of posts and may use two for the vocabulary I will provide at the beginning. Sorry, no roumaji in those posts. Also, because of the kanji/kana takes up so much space I may need to use more than one post to type some lessons. An example for you is this: 僕 is this-&#xu5;0D5-and takes up that much space-6 roman characters.
I will, however, provide roumaji in the first few lessons for those who are still learning kana. Each example will have kanji on one line, kana on the next, roumaji, and then a literal translation including omitting what's not said.
　　Back on the subject of the vocab. section again, some of the Japanese words might have multiple entries in my little dictionary there depending on how the words are related to each other. I might not do this however, I don't know. Note that many of those words will still use the same kanji.

　　For those who cannot see Japanese: If you're using a PC, get your windows CD and install the fonts. The setup should automatically come up when you insert the disc, but if it doesn't follow these instructions: Click START>CONTROL PANEL>REGIONAL and LANGUAGE options>second tab>install. You MUST have the CD unless you are using a laptop like mine where basically everything is already on it. Macs should already have them installed. For those who can't find their CD or are having problems go here. I suggest the Epson set; very good one.

Dictionary codes:
aux v-auxiliary verb
pre-prefix
suf-suffix
vi-intransitive verb
vt-transitive verb

Colour Codes:
　　Each post will be a different colour because I'm weird like that; but I will not use these colours in any post to make things easier.
Red will be for important changes that I have made like if I had misinformed you and found out.
Orange ]will be for semi-important changes like if I explained something wrong and found a better explanation.
Yellow will be for minor changes. Things that didn't necessarily need to be changed, but were.

Some history:
Coming soon

Contents:
Vocabulary
第1課：Pronunciation　UPDATED
第2課：仮名 and 漢字
第3課：Simple verb conjugations and the copula
第4課：
第5課：
第6課：
第7課：
第8課：
第9課：
第10課：
第11課：
第12課：
第13課：
第14課：

Recommendations:
Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese
Remembering the Kanji I, II, III, Hyper kanji! James W. Heisig(four books)
Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary
Oxford Starter's Japanese Dictionary
Kodansha Publishing
Breaking Into Japanese Literature Giles Murray
All About Particles Naoko Chino
How to Tell the Difference Between Japanese Particles Naoko Chino
The Handbook of Japanese Verbs Taeko Kamiya
The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs Taeko Kamiya
Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication Taeko Kamiya
A Dictionary of Japanese Particles Sue A. Kawashima

　　Japanese pronunciation is pretty easy, but not quite as easy as many think. There are some things that textbooks don't tell you. Some sounds are generally as in English, but there are some other things you need to know. Some of this is copied from Aiko san! She is a native speaker who was in the Japanese Student guild, but no longer comes on Gaia. The ones I copied are in pink and all revised.
Short Vowels
a=sounds like 'ah' as in father.
i=usually disappears after k, s, sh, p, h, ch, and f. When heard is like 'ee' in machine only shorter.
u=a Japanese u is pronounced without the lips rounded. you will notice that when you say "oo" your lips also stick out, do this in Japanese to just don't round the lips. It disappears after the voiceless consonants. (Same consonants as i)
e=is like 'eh' as in get.
o=is 'oh' as in bone.
Long Vowels
　　Long vowels are actually the short vowels said twice in rapid succession so it sounds like the vowel is held for twice as long.
aa=two a sounds
ii=is two i sounds that actually sounds more like the example above, the i in machine.
uu=is two uu sounds, the double oo in moon. Don't round your lips!
ei and ee=These actually sound a little different from each other. The former sounds like an e and an i and the latter like double e as you should think. ei is much more common than ee.
ou and oo=Again, these two sound a bit different. ou is much more common than oo.
Consonants
　　k, s, sh, ts, p, h, ch, and f are voiceless consonants which means i and u disappear after them as I've said above.
t and d=these are dental and said with the tip of your tongue just behind your top front teeth.
z=This "z" sound in Japanese is dental. It is different from English in that it is pronounced more like "dz"
na, nu, ne, and no=the n sound is dental.
ni=the n is palatal.
w=color=pink]a bilabial sound, it is pronounced by bringing the lower lips down from the upper lip at the starting of the sound "wa" or "wo" (if you pronounce it that way, in Japan it is a matter of preference, in your country it is a matter of what you are being teach)
fu=say a Japanese u but blow.
r=The worst. bring your tongue to where I told you to pronounce the Japanese d (see above) now say "ra" and tap your tongue once and JAN!(ta da!) you get Japanese r which sounds like l, r, and d.
n (This does not pertain to the n sounds with vowels above)=

g=a cross between a k and g
hi=put your tongue up to the roof of your mouth and say "hee"
b=a cross between a b and p

　　Double consonants are a bit confusing to me. In kana a it's written with the small tsu character. Some say they hear it as a double consonant with a glotteral stop, others say it's just a glotteral stop. Personally I hear it as the latter. I wasn't able to go back to school so I can't ask my teacher now, but I will see if Aiko san said anything about it before she left.

　　Although i and u disappear in most people's speeches today, many women may still sound out both of them at the end of sentences. Speeches will be covered later.

　　Aiko san had more in her guide, but I don't think y'all need to get into it all too soon.