Stop, Grammar Time!

I finished memorizing hiragana, and have moved on to very slowly learning katakana. My main focus lately though has been grammar, since that is where I am in TextFugu.

So far, I've learned that です means "it is" (sort of, the textbook promised we would understand it better later on), and that か at the end of a sentence makes it a question. I can ask　さるですか？ and answer はい、さるです。 (assuming we are talking about my little brother, of course ;)).

Now I'm supposed to read the first 3 kanji learning chapters. Whoa. I didn't expect to be touching kanji for a while, until I had more grammar under my belt at least. It sounds scary and overwhelming from reading what people say about it. O_O;;

Update: Definitely not scared of kanji anymore. It is still overwhelming, but TextFugu explained learning kanji in a way that makes it actually seem possible (I've never been good at memorization, so just the thought of just rote-memorizing thousands of complex kanji made me dizzy).

I knew there was a list of 2,000 kanji commonly used, now I know it named the Joyo Kanji List. :) Also, I think I have an idea of what radicals are, and have started learning 1 and 2-stroke radicals! This whole on-yomi versus kun-yomi thing is a little complicated.

Lesson One

I'm currently reading through TextFugu (and listening to Japanese Pod 101), and it suggests starting a blog to log (hehe) learning. That is what this is, though I can't promise I'll actually keep up with it. I've never been good at journaling.

The title supposedly translates to "Cool Japanese Phrase", but I'm almost certain that it isn't quite right. I used a Japanese dictionary, but using a dictionary certainly doesn't mean that the usage is correct. ;)

To get on with it, I just completed the first two sections of TextFugu, so my initial thoughts are on the alphabets. I already knew that there were four “alphabets” in Japanese, but I only vaguely understood them before. Well, I still only vaguely understand them, but it is less vague than before. ;)
I don't quite get the purpose of hiragana and katakana yet (if basically all vocab is made up at least somewhat of kanji?), but I'm hoping it will become clearer as I learn.

I'm not surprised that I won't be learning romaji in this textbook. I took Arabic lessons from a family friend for about 6 months while I was in high school, and she insisted that we learn the alphabet first, then learn words written in the alphabet. Writing an Arabic word with the English alphabet was a thing to be avoided at all costs. Certainly feels tougher to begin with, having to learn a whole new alphabet and new words all at the same time, but I bet it makes learning much easier overall.