Here are some more basic words for you to get started with. It's important to learn all the words from each lesson as you go otherwise you will get stuck later on.
| English | Romaji | Kana | Kanji | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good | ii | いい | ||
| Bad | dame | だめ | ||
| F | Yes | hai | はい | |
| F | No | iie | いいえ | |
| F | Hello | konnichi wa | こんにちは | |
| F | Goodbye | sayonara | さよなら | |
| This | kore | これ | ||
| That | sore | それ | ||
| Thank you | arigatou | ありがとう | ||
| F | I | watashi | わたし | 私 |
Whenever you see this symbol F like in the table above, it means that the word is Formal. In Japanese, unlike English, there are formal and informal words which are based on politeness levels. We will cover more on that subject later.
When you come across double vowels like in いい (ii) and いいえ (iie), the sound is held longer. Think of it like clapping for each character.
With that, いい (ii) will sound twice as long as い (i). This is very important to know because even changing the length can affect the words meaning. For example: いいえ means "No" but いえ would become "House"; You wouldn't want to call "obasan" (auntie) your "obaasan" (grandma) now, would you?
If you want to learn the pronunciations much sooner, it would be a good idea to study the Kana lessons first. This way, you can move away from romaji and start pronouncing words correctly; just be aware of Pitch Accent. For now, you can use a dictionary to find out more.
About Natural Spoken Japanese
Please understand that these basic words may not be completely natural in spoken Japanese. They will help get you started but there any many more words that are more natural than these but require additional context and information which would take up too much of this lesson meant to get you started.
For example, いいえ (iie) for saying "no", is not as common as you may think despite being used by most textbooks, apps or from real teachers. The whole point of introducing it is not only that it is used in written Japanese but also to explain how double vowels are pronounced.
It is found a lot in software and video game menus, on application forms, surveys and such but in spoken Japanese, not so much. It can even make your reply sound cold towards the listener. When you start listening to real Japanese people speaking, you will very rarely hear いいえ (iie) at all.
| English | Romaji | Kana | |
|---|---|---|---|
| F | No | ie | いえ |
| No | iya | いや |
The most natural and common way of saying "no" is いや (iya), いやいや (iyaiya) or いやー (iyaa).
However, despite saying いえ (ie) means "house", it can also mean "no" but depending on the context, it can sound very polite and can come across as very unnatural unless you are speaking to someone of higher status than yourself but even then, you will still likely hear いや (iya) being used.
If someone really wanted to be polite, then they would likely go with いえ (ie) instead of いいえ (iie).
| English | Romaji | Kana | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No | uun | ううん | |
| Yes | un | うん |
When you are being more casual, you can use ううん (uun) for "no" or うん (un) for "yes". These should only be used with family or friends. Otherwise, it might sound rude. I should also point out that the way these two are pronounced is more like /nn/ and /nnn/ without any /u/ sound. Making a distinctive う (u) sound here will sound very odd.
There are also more casual ways of saying "thank you", "Goodbye" and "Hello" so keep listening to real spoken Japanese and see if you can pick up on them.
Additional Notes
Japanese Pronunciation is very different to English. Try to check other sites such as YouTube to hear these words being spoken by real life Japanese people. You may also use an online dictionary such as japandict.com that has audio and an image for pitch accent.
Some people believe that using a translation engine such as "Google Translate" is 100% accurate and can translate anything. Please, don't fall into that trap. A translation engine can only interpret text and most of it's analyses is done by an AI crawling the WWW so it can compare two or more similar pages in different languages to "guess" what certain phrases translate into then verifying data with contributors. Give it a try and you'll see how poorly many translations become.
