Let's learn some Japanese!
Let's begin with a few words coming from someone who recently became a translator for a certain scanlation team. If you are interested in learning Japanese on your own to be able to read manga and watch anime without subs/dubs. Then I suggest you check out "the rule of Rubin", if you're not, then I suggest you stay away from that, because it could ruin your manga experience.
I've almost studied Japanese for 1 year now, via two different Universities here in Sweden. Honestly in my case the only hard part about Japanese is memorizing all the difficult and similar Kanji. However keep in mind that Japanese is a completely different language than English, Swedish or any European language. For some this means that learning Japanese is extremely difficult, just simply because it's so different from the language you already know. In either case let's begin!
Hiragana
No matter where or who you learn from, you need to learn hiragana first. In the same way you would learn the alphabet before learning English. Hiragana is the base of Japanese, if you know all the hiragana you can start writing/typing in Japanese. You will be able to understand some of the SFX words and expressions in manga and you will be able to lay the foundation of your Japanese.
This is the hiragana chart for every combination of hiragana possible. Don't worry you do not need to remember all of them right away! Focus on the basic ones at first. Once you got them down it's very simple to learn the others, because they're incredible simple combinations and they make sense when you think about it. Japanese makes a lot of sense when it comes to grammar and speech, however we'll get into that in a later lesson.
How do you remember these hiragana then? I remember that I used brute force and just remembered them via one of the links I'll provide later in the post. However there are many ways learn and a lot of people have problems just remembering them like I did. When we talk about Kanji later it's a little easier since there are fairly simple ways of remembering them. But when it comes to hiragana there is one way I thought of, while making this post.
How about remembering them via anime names? For instance:
ぞろ & さんじ
なみ & ろびん
めりおだす & ばん
えれん & みかさ
なつ & らくさす
ありす & えりな
よこ & ゆの
さわむら & さいたま
Use the chart above to read these names. See if you can get them right!
Spoiler: Answers
Tsu/つ
When you want to write a word with double consonant like "Happy" you use a small tsu/つ.
It looks like this: "はっぴ"
The irregulars here are when you use vowels or N/ん. A formal "Hi" in Japanese is "Kon'nichiwa", this is pronounced with a small stop at the " ' ". in other words "kon nichiwa". (It is also one of the very few words spelled with a "ha" instead of a "wa". This is how you spell it in Japanese "こんいちは".)
The other irregulars are when using the vowels, E & O. To make a vowel long you need to use U and I instead of O and E.
In other words "Sooma/そおま" becomes "Souma/そうま" & "Eega/ええが(movie)" becomes "Eiga/えいが"
cursive: pronunciation underlined: actual spelling.
The other three vowels are used normally: AA & UU & II
Now you're able to write/type all the different names in the world, by using hiragana. Try writing your own? Then leave a picture in the comments!
Pronunciation
The chart does a good job on showing how to pronounce the different vowels in Japanese, however as you have noticed by now, Japanese does have some weird pronunciations.
を/は/へ
"を" is mostly used as a particle and then pronounced "O"instead of "WO". "は" is pronounced "WA" when used as a particle. "へ" is also used as a particle and then pronounced "E". The particles are the biggest differences in Japanese and Chinese. But it is also something we will talk about in a later lesson!
ち
"chi" is pronounced "tchi" a short but still clear "t" in the beginning. That is the difference in between "ち" & "し".
R/L & B/V
Japanese does not have and distinction between R/L nor B/V. It's just a simple as that. When you use these hiragana "ら、り、れ、る、ろ" you make a sound in between R and L. Same thing goes with "びばべぶぼ", use a sound in between B and V. [/size]
The difference between "hi/ひ" & "bi/び" & "pi/ぴ" is first two small strokes and then a small circle.
This is the end of Lesson 1. If you have any questions regarding hiragana I'll gladly answer them in the thread. I won't answer any questions regarding katakana, kanji or anything that will be covered later on. If you are asking about specific words I don't mind answering but google translate works fine and since you now know how to use hiragana you will be able to write any word you're curious about.
Spoiler: Hiragana practice links!