We will learn how the written Japanese language works and learn the two basic languages, the Hiragana and Katakana.
The language has many formal levels depending on the context, age, relationship status, social status, etc. The one we will be using is the standard polite teineigo with some explanations for the plain/dictionary form.
There are three distinct characters in Japanese, each representing the English word besides it:
- Hiragana: ひらがな
- Katakana: カタカナ
- Kanji: 漢字
The hiragana and katakana are similar systems. They represent sounds in syllables and you should be fluent in both of them both in writing and reading. There are many resources for learning how to write hiragana and how to write katakana.
The Kanji has thousands upon thousands of characters, but with just learning few hundreds you can start reading in Japanese. This is an ideographic character set, where each character has one or many meanings.
Kanjis can also contain Furigana, which is just small Hiragana characters written besides them to help with the more complex pronunciations for rare Kanjis. What is considered rare depends on the context, so kid's books are full of furigana while adult novels don't have many of them.