Hello,

There’re only some more Hiragana left! I’m looking forward to your journal written in Hiragana.

The consonant that stands by itself is just "n" in Japanese, so "desu" is pronounced as "de-su" with two syllables.
However, you might not be able to hear it since the last "u" is a very subtle sound and tends to be whispered. We don’t need to emphasize it.

Konnichiwa Arimode, genki desu ka?

Yeah the hiragana is really coming on, I'll have to invest in a japanese keyboard before I write my journals in Japanese.

Thanks for the answer to my question as well, it helps my studies a lot.

Mike

It's not necessary to buy a Japanese keyboard. All you have to do is configure your computer to type in Japanese. I'm not sure but I think this is the same website I used to set my computer up to do it: http://www.coscom.co.jp/learnjapanese801/howtotypejapanese.html

If that doesn't explain it well enough or something, just google "setting your computer up to type Japanese." Or something along those lines, anyway.

After it's set up, you type the exact same way you type in romaji. There are only a few exceptions.

わ＆は
To type the second one as a particle which is written like the letter "ha" but is pronounced "wa" you must type "ha."

お＆を
To type the second one (another particle) which is written in romaji as "o" or "wo" you must type "wo."

ず＆づ
To type the second one which is pronounced "zu" like the first but written differently, you type "du."

じ＆ぢ
To type the second one which is pronounced "ji" like the first one but written differently, you type "di."

Everything else is the same as the romaji. For example, for a small "tsu" っ you type it as you would in romaji. Like the word "mikka." Typing "mikka" will get the small "tsu" like this: みっか. The same thing applies for any other word with a small tsu. Just type two of the consonant that appears in the romaji. "Tatte"->たって.

Oh, one thing I forgot. To get the n by itself "ん" you have to type two Ns. So if a word naturally has two like "konnichiwa" you have to type three Ns, making it: こんにちは

Wow, thanks a lot Diversemelody. Your post is very informative and I'll definitely look into getting that set up. If you need any help with anything just ask and I'd love to help you out.

Mike :)

No problem. I thought I should let you know so you don't have to hunt for a Japanese keyboard. That could be difficult, not to mention expensive. Sometimes switching back and forth to Japanese and English using those settings can be a pain, but it works pretty well. The biggest problem I have is that sometimes it won't show the whole language bar and after I turn it to Japanese, it won't let me turn it to katakana or hiragana so what I type still comes out in romaji. If that happens, you can right click the language bar and click "restore the language bar." This will move it up to the top of the computer screen, but it will usually fix the problem. If it doesn't, you can click the minimize button and it'll move back down to the bottom of the screen and that too might fix the problem.

That's the only real problem I've had with it though. It's pretty simple to use (although that N by itself gives me trouble when I forget to type two Ns.) Katakana works the same way (including the double N) and for kanji you just have to press the space bar after the word and it will turn into, usually, the correct kanji. If it doesn't, you can press the space bar again for a list of possible kanji. I can't read very many kanji yet so I don't use it much but I do know that it's easy to use. One annoying thing about that though is that after you type for so long it automatically changes everything to kanji. To get it back in hiragana you have to go back and erase it (without backspacing all of what you've already typed or it will do it again) and type the hiragana again. So far, I haven't found a way to keep it from doing that.

There are a few other little problems that I have with it, but overall it's much more simple than I would have thought it to be. I've been using it for about a year now so if you have any questions about how it works I can probably tell you.

Well, good luck with learning Japanese! Smart.fm is a good site to learn it. Once you learn hiragana and katakana I recommend doing the Japanese Core 2000 series and the Minna no Nihongo series. I've just started them and most of the words in the first parts I already know from Rosetta Stone, but I like it because they use the really basic words that you will use most frequently. It's a good place to start.