ADMIN UPDATE 20110818: The video in this post was hosted on 12seconds.tv. Sadly, the site is no longer active. This post is kept here for posterity.
So, here's my attempt to make Japanese much more approachable than most people think it is! It's ThePete's 12 Second Japanese Lessons where you'll learn Japanese in tiny, bite sized chunks--like sushi! Only I'll make it easier since you won't need chopsticks. :P
I won't get too detailed in these--expect to learn basic, informal stuff only. I'll mention it if I'm going over stuff I know to be formal Japanese. Just please remember that I'll be going over informal Japanese unless otherwise noted.
In lesson #1, I cover the most important words to know if you're interacting with a Japanese person: "yes" and "no".
ThePete's 12 Second Japanese Lesson #1 on 12seconds.tv
Here's how both look when you write it in hiragana:
はい and いいえ
Here they are in romaji (almost phonetic spelling) hai and iie (hah-ee and ee-yeh)
The two basic sets of characters in Japanese writing are katakana and hiragana. The latter is for words native to Japanese and the former is for words taken from other language. Most of the words I'll be teaching are going to be in hiragana. You can recognize the difference when you see the more angular katakana for the foreign words versus the more curvy hiragana for the indigenous Japanese words.
Special thanks to Alex Brooke for teaching me a good chunk of what I know through his free podcast available at LearnJapanesePod.com (check out his music and other cool stuff at AlexBrooke.com!).
In case you're curious, I'm not terribly qualified to teach Japanese, but I consider myself at a tourist level. In other words, I know how to ask for directions. What I know I've taught myself by listening to Pimsleur's Japanese, Alex Brooke's podcast, the podcast at JapanesePod101.com, the book Japanese from Zero Volume 1, the computer program "Power Japanese" and, of course, watching hours and hours of Japanese films and anime.
If you know Japanese better than I and see me make a mistake, please speak up! I want to learn, too! ^_^
