こんにちは, みんな (Konnichiwa minna)！！！Welcome to another post by your Goddess Moon.

Today, as you can tell by the title, I’m going to be discussing my journey learning Japanese, aka the second language to capture my heart.

This post isn’t going to be as in-depth as the Spanish one because Japanese is a lot harder for me to pick up and study. Additionally, I haven’t been studying the way I’m supposed to (Father, I have sinned) and you know what they say; if you don’t use it, you lose it.

But, I’m going to try my best to break down Japanese into the easiest chucks for others to learn. Since this is a symbol language, I’ll include romanization on the side for pronunciation purposes only. I do not recommend trying to learn this language through romanization as that will only mess you up in the future.

Ready, set, start!!!

Japanese or 日本語(Nihongo)

Just like Spanish, I’ve been learning Japanese on and off for several years, practically since birth. Unlike Spanish, however, my methods and ways of studying Japanese were unstructured and sporadic due to me having to rely completely on myself to figure the language out. I had no one to guide me and as a child, that impacted my language learning detrimentally.

My earliest attempts at learning Japanese were through Rosetta Stone and Google Translate aka, some of the worst methods to learn a language. Rosetta Stone just throws you into the language without any sort of foundation or understanding of the language in an attempt to immerse you into the language. Google Translate gives less accurate translations depending on how far the languages are apart.

What I mean by that is, English to Spanish is more likely to yield accurate results than English to Japanese because English and Spanish have a common mother language (Latin) and are in the same language family versus English and Japanese being in two different language families and having next to no similarities.

I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, I didn’t formally start learning Japanese properly until high school. I started researching Japanese and using language apps, YouTube, and following Japanese language content creators. I also helped that I have a friend that’s also obsessed with learning Japanese and we were able to hold each other accountable (we need to get back to doing that).

I started learning, Hiragana (one of the Japanese alphabets), Katakana (another alphabet), and Kanji (Chinese characters with Japanese meanings). As of today, I have mastered Hiragana, have sort of mastered Katakana, and am working on Kanji.

There’s over 1000 Kanji characters in Japanese and they are often considered the hardest part of learning the language along with the grammar structure. As of today, I can only recognize around 10-20 Kanji symbols which is way below average but we’re not going to focus on that.

Instead, let me go over some common Japanese words and phrases. Let’s hope I can properly explain them in a similar fashion to my Spanish explanations (spoiler alert: not likely).

• Hello/Good morning = こんにちは/おはようございます (Konnichiwa/Ohayo gozaimasu)
• Goodbye = さようなら (Sayonara)
• Good night = こんばんは (Konbanwa)
• No problem = 問題ない (Mondainai)
• What is your name? = お名前は何ですか？(O namae wa nan desu ka?)
• My name is… = 私/僕は。。。です (Watashi/boku wa …desu)
• How are you? = 元気ですか？(Genki desu ka?)
• Japan/Japanese = 日本/日本語 (Nihon/Nihongo)
• Yes/No = はい/いいえ (Hai/Iie)
• Please = お願いします/ください (Onegaishimasu/Kudasai)
• Thank you = ありがとう/ありがとうございます (Arigatou/Arigatou gozaimasu)
• Sorry = ごめん/ごめんなさい (Gomen/Gomennasai)

Surprisingly, I know more necessary Japanese phrases than I thought. Now to see if I can properly explain them. Let’s get into it.

こんにちは/おはようございます

こんにちは (Konnichiwa) can actually be used to ask or say a variety of things in Japanese. It can be used to say good morning, hello, good afternoon, or good day. It’s a standard greeting in Japan and you will here this phrase everywhere. Now, おはようございます (Ohayo gozaimasu) actually means “Good morning” in Japanese and is just as commonly used as こんにちは (Konnichiwa). The second part of the phrase ございます (gozaimasu) adds formality to the phrase and can be dropped when speaking to certain family members or close friends.

さようなら

さようなら (Sayonara) is the most basic way to say goodbye to someone in Japan. I’m sure there are other less formal ways to say goodbye in Japan, but this is the only phrase that was taught to me at the time of writing this. While this phrase is more formal, it can be used in informal situations as well.

こんばんは

Just as there is a greeting for the morning time, there’s a standard greeting for evening and nighttime: こんばんは (Konbanwa). Notice how both こんにちは (Konnichiwa) and こんばんは (Konbanwa) start with こん (Kon) and end with は (wa/ha). It can be very easy to mix these two phrases up, but the more you become comfortable with the Japanese language, the better these two phrases and their proper meanings will stick.

問題ない

問題ない (Mondainai) is more of a slang term than anything else. You can use this phrase after a friend thanks you for doing something. I have to note two things though: 1) there is a version of this phrase where it’s pronounced “mondai wa nai” instead of the above pronunciation. I haven’t figured out which one is proper or what the difference is, so for the sake of this post, both are correct. 2) The proper way to say “you’re welcome” in Japanese is どういたしまして (Doutashimashite), but this way isn’t common to use for native Japanese speakers.

お名前は何ですか？

For this phrase, I’m excited to announce that I know some of the grammar behind this phrase. お名前は何ですか？(O namae wa nan desu ka?) is one way to ask someone for their name. Because Japanese has formality tied into the language, the お (O) you see before 名前は (namae wa) makes the sentence more polite to use for the general public versus just with friends or family. Additionally, the ですか (desu ka), specifically the か (ka) makes the sentence a question. Another note: Japanese sentence structure is subject-object-verb instead of subject-verb-object like we have in English. So, this sentence directly translates to “Name what is?) in English.

私/僕は。。。です

I can give more of a cultural lesson behind this phrase. I guess you could also count this as grammatical if you think about it the right way. In the phrase 私/僕は。。。です (Watashi/boku wa …desu) and the language of Japanese, there are two ways to say “I” depending on gender. 私 (Watashi) is used by women/girls and 僕 (boku) is used by men/boys. An additional grammar lesson, the は (wa/ha) you see here is a subject marker in Japanese. This sentence translate to, “I … am”.

元気ですか？

元気ですか？(Genki desu ka?) is the most basic way to ask “How are you?” in Japanese. From my understanding though, it’s not actually used often in Japan. There are more casual ways to ask someone how they are doing, but I currently don’t know them (aka, I probably forgot). This sentence literally translates to “Well are you?”.

日本/日本語

I figured since I’m teaching Japanese, I should at least teach you how to say/read the country and language in Japanese. 日本 (Nihon) is how you say Japan and 日本語 (Nihongo) is how you say Japanese (language). A standard rule I’ve observed for languages is that it’s a combination of the name of the country and adding 語 (go) to the end of it. So, country + 語.

はい/いいえ

This is probably the simplest Japanese you’re ever going to learn: yes and no. For yes, you say はい (hai); for no, you say いいえ (iie). いいえ is pronounced as ee-ee-e for clarification. Hope that makes sense.

お願いします/ください

We’re almost to the end now. I am now going to teach you how to say “please” in Japanese. There are two ways to say it: お願いします (onegaishimasu) and ください (kudasai). お願いします (onegaishimasu) can translate to “I beg of you” or “if you could”. ください (kudasai) translates to “please give me”; ください (kudasai) is more used when you’re asking someone for something versus お願いします (onegaishimasu) being used when you’re begging or asking something to do something. Does that make sense?

ありがとう/ありがとうございます

Now, onto thank you. If you’re an anime watcher, you’ve probably heard this phrase more times that you can count. The most basic way of saying “thank you” in Japanese is ありがとう (arigatou). This is used in informal situations with people you are close with. ありがとうございます (arigatou gozaimasu) is used in more formal situations with people older than you or at work. There are other, more casual ways to say “thank you” in Japanese, but I currently don’t have any knowledge of them unfortunately.

ごめん/ごめんなさい

Last but not least, let me teach you how to say “sorry”. As with many other Japanese phrases, there is a formal and informal way of saying “sorry”. In informal situations, you would say ごめん (gomen). In formal situations, you would say ごめんなさい (gomenasai).

Unlike Spanish, I’m not too knowledgeable about Japanese grammar, so I apologize for not being able to go too in depth with grammatical principles and way Japanese words are spelt the way they are and why things are said a certain way.

My hope is to become more fluent in Japanese this year and focus more on the language and grasping the different grammatical principles and concepts.

I know this was a really long blog post, but if you’ve made it this far, I applaud and respect you.

Thank you for tuning into another blog post and I’ll see you in the next one!!!