Japanese Language Basic Program

ORIENTATION To Begin With the MISJ BASIC PROGRAM

What You Are Going to Study　

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I am Mikiko Iwasaki. You are going to study the Japanese language with me.
At the beginning, I would like to discuss some fundamental matters.
First of all, all languages are made up of words which themselves have meanings.

Language = Σ Word

The words can be divided at least into the following three categories.

	Category	Examples of English words
	NOUN	apple, book, coffee, etc.
	VERB	eat, read, drink, feel, etc.
	ADJECTIVE	delicious, interesting, hot, happy, etc.

Then what are the differences among so many languages used in this world? We can point out three big differences.
1. Each language has its own combination of sounds.
2. Each language has its own letters or writing system to show these sounds.
3. Each language has its own rules to assemble words into sentences or to make expressions.

What do you think about the sentence below?
I yesterday go son school meet teacher.

It is not good but is understandable "English", isn't it?
Since a language is basically a package of words, if your aim is simply to allow yourself to be understood or to just understand what your counterpart is trying to say, all you have to do is to learn how to pronounce basic letters and memorize as many words as possible. This means only the sounds and the letters, which are the first two differences I previously pointed out, are important.

However, if your aim is a little higher, the third point becomes very important because you cannot make reasonably good sentences if you don't know the fundamental rules of how to assemble words into sentences or how to make various expressions in each language.
I went to my son's school to meet his teacher.

Now you have got a good English sentence that reflects your intelligence. I think this is the level of speech worth devoting time and energy for language study.
The fundamental rules are called "grammar" . In this program, you are going to study the sounds, basic letters and the grammar of Japanese language. I guarantee that you will find every one of them is quite unique but rather simple and easy to learn.
Although the program is designed to make you systematically learn these points which apparently has nothing to do with conversation, our main purpose is to achieve conversational skills. Thus, every point of grammar is introduced as a tool to be used in practical conversation such as ordering and shopping or in everyday conversation such as what you did or what happened yesterday.