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Ok, since I'm not too good myself yet, I'll just post here a few lessons for the complete beginners, who haven't started learning Japanese yet. I'll take this step by step, not all in one day, so please don't post all to much here so it's easy to find what people are looking for.

Navigation:

First page: Lesson 1 and 2 and country names.
Second page: Lesson 3

Tomodachi with the O added makes it more formal. Applies to a few words.

Like tanjoubi omedetou gozaimasu can become more formal when saying otanjoubi omedetou gozaimasu. Means Happy Birthday.

Extra for lesson 2 - Country names


Australia - Oosutoraria

America - Amerika

China - Chugoku

Doitsu - German

England - Igirisu

Greece - Girisha

Italy - Itaria

Japan - Nihon

Korea - Kankoku

Mongolia - Mongoru

Russia - Roshia

Switzerland - Suisu


If you know any country names I haven't listed here, please let me know and I'll add them, or if you don?t see your country up there, I?ll see what I can do ^^

Lesson 3

Here you will learn a new sentence pattern:

"noun" wa nan desu ka?

Which is translated as : What is noun?

Now let's look at the words kore, sore and are (also covered in lesson and info sticky)

Kore = this
Sore = that
Are = that over there
Dore = which

Are wa konpyuutaa desu = that thing over there is a computer.
Sore wa nan desu ka? = What is that?
Kore wa kamera desu = This is a camera
Dore wa kamera desu ka?= which is a camera (is it this, or is it the other)

When it stand with a noun, you change the 're' ending into a 'no'

Are mo konpyuuta desu = this is also a computer
Ano konpyuuta wa ... desu = this computer is...
Kore wa tomodachi no desu = this is my friend's (it belongs to my friend)
Kono kamera wa tomodachi no desu = this camera is my friend's
Dono kamera wa watashi no desu ka= which camera is mine?
Are wa watashi no kamera desu = this is your camera.

Ano inu no namae wa nan desu ka? = This dog over there, what is it's name?

If you wan't to ask who owns something, you simply use the ''dare'' which means ''who''.

Dare no zasshi desu ka? Who's magazine is it?

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Vocabulary

Kore - that over there
Sore - that
Are - that over there
Dore - which
Konpyuutaa - computer
Kamera - camera
Zasshi - magazine
Nan - what
Dare - who (beware, do not confuse this with dore)
onamae - name (formal)
namae - name (informal)


End of lesson 3

you don't use o- (prefix) on yourself. Only for other people.

And now, it is also used to explain a noun of someone elses.

Wa is a particle which indicates the subject. So, in this case, anata or you are the subject. For more info on this, you can see the thread I made entitled 'common mistakes'. Ka is another kind of particle. It makes the entire sentence a question. For example:

Anata wa otomodachi desu. You are a friend.

Anata wa otomodachi desu ka. Are you a friend?

The ? at the end of a sentence is unneccesary in most Japanese sentences since the 'ka' already indicates a question. But some Japanese use the ? anyways, just to make the sentence more clear. Western influences also contribute to this ^^

for the extras in lesson two
Kanada - is Canada of course ^.^