Katakana: ナ

Romaji: na

memory aide:  think of the knot in the ribbon that you put on a present.  This is where the two ribbons, cross.  You tie a knot.

Don’t confuse it with オ (romaji: o), the na does nothave the extra line on the bottom.

 Example words:

ナイフ        naifu         knife

ナンバー　  nanbaa     number

Katakana: ト

Romaji: to

memory aide:  think of the t in toe.  It looks like a “t”.  and the “toe” will help you remember the pronounciation. 

 Example words:

トースト       toosuto     toast

トップ　       toppu       top, first 

Hiragana: あ Romaji: a

jinsk.com/fluentyet/japanese/

www.japanesejapanese.com/

www.blogtoplist.com/rss/japan.html

 

newton.uor.edu/Departments&Programs/AsianStudiesDept/japan-language.html

www.manythings.org/japanese/links/

www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html

 

List of lists

babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/lists/japanese.html

 www.colorado.edu/ealld/atj/Japan_info/lists.html

www.lib.duke.edu/ias/eac/listservs.html

Japanese club mailing list:

list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/japan-list

IMC-Japan Mailing list:

lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-japan

pmjs is an interdisciplinary forum for more than 800 members worldwide who do research into earlier periods of Japanese art, culture, history, religion and literature.

www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/

 

Japan mailing list at the Asian Human Rights Council

www.ahrchk.net/statements/mainfile.php/announcements/784/

 

Shoutcast provides a listing of many online music stations.  Here is a list of Japanese language music stations:

www.shoutcast.com/directory/?s=japan

Katakana: テ

Romaji: te

memory aide:  think of a telephone pole.  It looks like a telephone pole with two horizontal bars and one veritical bar.  The sound is the same “te” in telephone.

Characters that look like it: 

Katakana:   ナ    Romaji: na

Katakana:    チ   Romaji: chi

Katakana:    キ   Romaji: ki

Katakana:    モ      Romaji: mo

Katakana:    イ   Romaji: i

Katakana: ケ      Romaji: ke

How do you keep from confusing “te” with the above?  Well, the telephone has two cross bars.  So, that rules out na, i, and ke.  (There are several similar looking characters that have the bar to the side.  Remember also that the “te”lephone pole has the vertical bar in the middle.)

Now, it is going to be a little more difficult to seperate it from mo, chi and ki.  An obvious difference is that the vertical bar stops at the bottom horizontal bar and does not touch the top one.  Unfortunately our memory aide works against this point.  At this point, I can only point out this difference between them.  Remeber the “te”lephone pole does not go to the top bar.

 Example words:

 テープ       teepu      tape

 テーム　       teemu       theme

I have found the Kana-a-day practice pad extremly useful for learning to write, read, and remember the Hiragana and Katakana.  Each day, it has a kana character, a place to practice it 24 times.  Since I am going to Japan in July, though, I have been trying to do 7 of the pages a day.  I definately recommend getting it.