I'll have to reduce the frequency of these update posts due to constantly revising previous material and really only making slight progress by the week. Therefore, I'll start blogging my updates monthly. This, in turn, allows me to focus on studying, rather than noting down what I learned every day.
Renshuu added a Japanese Basics and a Words for Japanese Basics class to my schedule, among which I'm learning some basic kanji. Do I remember any of the kanji? Of course not. Renshuu has its own kanji schedule for many stages of learning Japanese. These schedules follow JLPT's (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) levels of Japanese understanding. These levels range from N5 to N1, with N5 being the lowest level.
I'm slowly expanding my vocabulary of words, now being able to describe objects and people with different attributes. (fancier than saying adjectives, eh?) As I haven't practiced today as of writing this, I'll just rapid fire some words and check later if they're correct.
- いしゃ /isha/ - Doctor, physician
- にちようび /nichiyōbi/ - Sunday
- いそがしい /isogashii/ - Busy, occupied
After draft: yes, these were all correct :)
Among that, I started learning how to ask questions, use multiple adjectives and making those adjectives negative. Asking questions is really simple. Essentially, you just write the classic AはBです sentence (using the renshuu syntax here) but add a か at the end. For example, わたしはかわいいです。means "I am cute.". However, adding a か at the end makes it a question. Now we have
わたしはかわいいですか？which means "Am I cute?". Keep in mind the question mark at the end is completely optional. It would still be a question regardless.
I never mentioned adjectives in my past posts, so I might as well just throw the essentials out here. Japanese has 2 kinds of adjectives depending on their last kana: な-adjectives and い-adjectives. The difference between the two is minor; all you have to know is when using な-adjectives, you can omit the な at the end.
Making adjectives negative (eg. cute & not cute, like & dislike, etc.) is quite easy. With な-adjectives, you just have to drop the な and add じゃない instead. For example: げんき（な）, which means "like" (as in: enjoy) would be げんきじゃない when negative. In this case, it would mean "not like". On the other hand, making い-adjectives negative is also a breeze. However, this time, instead of using じゃない, we use くない and drop the い at the end. For example: かわいい means "cute" and かわいくない means "not cute".
Using several adjectives when describing one thing is simple too. There is still a slight difference with な and い adjectives. With い-adjectives, you drop the い and add くて instead. This くて acts somewhat like an "and" in English. な-adjectives drop the な and add で instead. Same as before, the で acts like an "and" in English. Negative adjectives work the same way as regular い-adjectives, since in both cases, they end with an い.
I reckon this is enough already, as I'm approaching 600 words in total. For the ones on summer break on their way to high school, I wish y'all a peaceful and quiet break, as after the (fun) terror your brain went through in those classes, you really need to rest.