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Kanji are characters imported from China that have meaning.
	There are 2,136 kanji that all Japanese citizens learn in primary and secondary school.
	Understanding these will bring you a long way, but the average Japanese person knows more than 3,000 kanji.
	In this lesson you will learn your first kanji, which you will use in the next lesson to make sentences.


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	The characters with the word component behind them are actually not kanji at all.
	Components are symbols that can be found inside kanji, for example 私 is composed of 禾 and 厶.
	Components by themselves don't have any meaning, but we give them names such that we can talk about them.



	Components make memorizing kanji easier, because they allow us to see kanji as a collection of a few components instead of as a lot of random strokes.
	Kanji themselves can also serve as components in other kanji.



	We won't teach the pronunciation of the kanji in the kanji lessons, as most kanji have multiple pronunciations.
	The ways in which the kanji can be pronounced will become clear once they are used inside words.

Kanji 1

hiragana character

kanji

adnominal

adverb

auxiliary

conjunction

compound

i-adjective

interjection

noun

na-adjective

numeral

particle

case particle

conjunctive particle

discourse particle

prefix

pronoun

suffix

verb

sentence

hiragana writing

kanji writing

kanji component

reading vocabulary

katakana writing

katakana character

godan - group 1

itidan - group 2

group 3

transitive

intransitive

proper noun

discourse

phrase

expression

adjectival noun

adverbial phrase

adjectival phrase

adverbial noun

The verb to be

Hiragana 1

Writing hiragana 1

Writing kanji 1

Hiragana 2

Kanji 2

The question particle か

Writing hiragana 2

This one and that one

Writing kanji 2

Reading exercise 1

Reading exercise 2

Hiragana 3

Negating nouns

Writing hiragana 3

The topic particle は

Kanji 3

The possession particle の

い-adjectives and な-adjectives

The subject particle が

Here and there

There is, there are

Writing kanji 3

Kanji 4

Group 1 verbs, direct and indirect objects

Group 2 verbs

Hiragana 4

Verbs in the past tense

Negating verbs

Invitations and the particle と

Negating past verbs

Writing hiragana 4

Reading exercise 3

Writing kanji 4

Reading exercise 4

Kanji 5

Nouns and the past tense

This and that

The group 3 verbs する and 来る

The discourse particles ね and よ

The location particles に and で

Hiragana 5

Writing hiragana 5

Writing kanji 5

The destination particles に and へ

Kanji 6

The origin particle から

Hiragana 6

Relative positions

Conjugating い-adjectives

Writing hiragana 6

Writing kanji 6

Hiragana 7

Writing hiragana 7

Kanji 7

Conjugating な-adjectives

How are you?

The particle も

The word ちょっと

Reading exercise 7

Question	Answer
人	person
木	tree; wood
丿 ^component	bend
禾 ^component	grain Mnemonic: the grain is so heavy that it bends the tree it grows on.
厶 ^component	private
私	I Mnemonic: this grain is for private consumption. Only I can eat it.
山	mountain

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