Learning Japanese [Diary 2]
I feel that I’m writing this post a bit late since I already finished about 20 lessons from Japanesepod101, but I’ll try to summarize the latest lessons I studied recently.
Months and The Name of Month Days
The modern Japanese names for the months consist of the corresponding number combined with the suffix 月(gatsu).
For example, the word 一月(ichi-gatsu) literally means: the first month - January - , 十二月(juni-gatsu) means: the twelve month - December - .
When I learned that, I felt relieved, I don’t have to memorize 12 new words, I already memorize the numbers and understand the numeric system, the only new word I had to learn is gatsu!
This is a bit different when it comes to the name of month days, you will have to memorize the names of the first 10 days, they almost sound nothing like their corresponding numbers but they use the same Kanji charechters for numbers and day.
For example 三日 consists of the charechter 三 which means 3 and regularlly pronounced san and the charechter 日 which means day and pronounced depending on the context; However the combo 三日 is pronounced mikka.
Regarding the days 11 - 31, you will use the corresponding number combined with the same suffix 日 but this time you will pronounce it (nichi).
Can you guess what day 十二日(juni-nichi) is?
Tsu っ:
In Arabic, we have the shadda sign ّ to mark a long consonant, for example, the word قطّة which has shadda on the consonant ط is pronounced Ke[tt]a.
In Japanese, we use the hiragana charachter っ to double a consonant; A slightly bigger version of this charachter つ is pronounced tsu, but the small version doubles the character that comes after it.
As an example, にっぽん is pronounced Nippon and it means Japan.
That’s for today .. Mata ne!
