Greetings

One of the first things you learn when you learn a new language (excluding some of the bad words) are greetings. Or as they are called in Japanese, 挨拶 (Aisatsu)!

english	romaji	kana	kanji
good morning	ohayo gozaimasu	おはようございます	お早うございます
good afternoon	konnichiwa	こんにちは	今日は
good evening	konbanwa	こんばんは	今晩は
good night	oyasumi nasai	おやすみなさい	お休みなさい
goodbye	sayonara	さよなら

Jan 03, 2012

Basic words

Learning to speak Japanese requires constant practice and a lot of reading and studying. I couldn't think of a better place to put some of my own personal notes, except here, I hope you don't mind. For those of you who may be interested, (or who are also learning Japanese) you can use this list as a reference too.

english	romaji	kana	kanji
who	dare	だれ	誰
what	nani	なに	何
when	itsu	いつ	何時
where	doko	どこ	何処
why	doushite / naze	どうして / なぜ	如何して / 何故
how	dou / ikaga	どう / いかが	如何 / 如何
which way	dochira	どちら	何方
how much	ikura	いくら	幾ら
how long / how far	donogurai	どのぐらい	どの位

Particles

Japanese particles (助詞 or てにをは) don't exist in english, but they are necessary for Japanese grammar. You can not make Japanese sentences without them. This is only a short list of the basic elementary particles. (For beginners, particles are kind of like: and, by, of, or, to, etc.)

romaji	hiragana	details
wo	を	Direct object indicator
ha	は	Topic marker
ga	が	Subject identifier
ni (and) e	に (and) へ	Destination indicator
de	で	Action indicator
no	の	Possession indicator
to	と	Connector
ya	や	List connector
mo	も	Includer
ka	か	Question maker
yo	よ	Empasizer
ne	ね	Terribly overused
na	な	Quasi-adjective indicator

Additional details from wikipedia: Particles follow the same rules of phonetic transcription as all Japanese words, with the exception of は (written ha, pronounced wa), へ (written he, pronounced e) and を (written using a hiragana character with no other use in modern Japanese, originally assigned as wo, now usually pronounced o, though some speakers render it as wo).

More information can be found here.

Jan 01, 2012