JAMP 4

Who, what, where, when, why and how?

These are the common questions we hear every day in any language.

• だれ - Who?
• なに or なん - What?
• どこ - Where?
• いつ - When?
• なんで - Why?
• どう - How?

Remembering in Japanese the words will not be pronounced as one unit, but rather as separate syllables. E.g - だれ (Dare), will not be pronounced as in the English ‘I didn’t dare‘ but will be pronounced as ‘da’ ‘re’. Remembering how Japanese ‘R’ is pronounced.

They are said with the same rising intonation as you would in English for a question. (What is rising intonation)?

If asking the above questions, the formal way would be to add to the end of each ‘です か ‘. So ‘Who?’ becomes だれ です か in order to become a complete sentence.

あなた は だれ です か = Who are you? (Not polite)

The same could be applied to

あなた は どこ です か = Where are you?

In case you haven’t already figured out, adding ‘ka’ to then end of a word or sentence turns the statement into a question. ‘Desu’ is simply the Japanese verb ‘to be’. So it could take on the form of ‘is’, ‘are’ or ‘am’ in English. Though I am sure I will learn that they are not it’s only meanings

By now you will have noticed a few different characters that weren’t previously included in my Hiragana and Katakana tables. Simple reason is that once the previous tables are learned the additional characters seem easier because you only need to add a minor thing to create a different sound with the same character. Look for yourself and you will see what I mean.

Additional Hiragana

Additional Katakana

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