Hoping to Learn Japanese?

[gossypiumYeoman]

Title says it all, really... I really wanna learn to get a few basics of Japanese down. ...Basically, I wanna know how to speak Japanese, but I don't know how to make the first step in learning... Therefore, I have come to this board. Can anyone help me learn a bit of Japanese? Pronunciation? Words? Putting it all into a sentence? Please help me.

[gossypiumYeoman]

bump.

[nintendogfreak4]

I know a bit. First of all, there is only one way to pronounce the vowels.

a - ah
i - ee
u - oo
e - eh
o - oh

And the vowels go in that order.

[gossypiumYeoman]

That helps... XD I struggle with pronouncing many things. Thanks x3

[lizzysama]

In Japanese there are different writing systems, for example hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana is what I learned first (I'm by no means an expert, I'm only in intermediate japanese! lol) so I think it's easier to start with it. In class, we had to learn them before doing anything else, it's like learning the alphabet.
HIRAGANA VOWELS-
A(ah)-あ, I(ee)-い, U(oo)-う, E(eh)-え, O(oh)-お
...I was going to type the rest of them, but I just realized they might not show up on your computer, so here's a link to a chart- http://www.easyjapanese.org/kana_chart_img.html
Katakana is mostly used to writing foreign words in japanese, and kanji is pretty complex, I'm kinda just learning it myself still..　:)

For sentences, there are different structures depending on what you are saying, but for basics, its kind of like this-
SUBJECT は(ha but pronounced as wa) OBJECT を (wo, but really pronounced as oh)　VERB , for example, I（わたし）　eat（たべます, tabemas） sushi（すし）- わたし　は　すし　を　　たべます(watashi wa sushi oh tabemas)。( I spaced it out to show the parts, there usually are not spaces).
At the end of statements that don't end in verbs, there is usually です (pronounced des) and if there is a か (pronounced ka) that indicates the sentence is a question. Des ne （ですね）at the end of the sentence is kind of like saying "----, isn't it?" and des yo（ですよ）gives the sentence emphasis.
I know this isn't much, but I hope it helps!

[gossypiumYeoman]

Omgar, it helps a lot XD Sentences confuse me the most.

[lizzysama]

Yeah, there are many different particles to use depending on the sentence (the は、を, etc). This page has some more info on them- http://www.easyjapanese.org/grammar.html.