I am at the phase where I am wondering "how does those two lines make the ___ sound?" I also notice I keep reverting to English system where letters always make the same sound for the most part.
I keep wondering if I see __ symbol does this ALWAYS sound like this, is it always written like this.. etc. For example in English you see the letter "A" and.. nearly every time you see this letter you can at least expect to make the constant or vowel sound A. Same for Romance languages like in Spanish the letter Y may not sound like the English Y but still that letter represents a sound, and always will. You will always know what sound to make when you see that letter. Is Japanese the same way with their system? If not what are the differences?
Also how do they add on to the words? I tried this on my own and they claim a symbol + a symbol is supposed to = both symbols merged however it usually just looks like something entirely different.. I don't know. All of this is really confusing to me. I know you're all going to say "Study Kanjii" but I just get distracted when I see the actual symbols. I wonder what the sound means, how does it look when other things are added to it and overall I think my brain is just stuck in English and Romance mode.
What is good advice or resources on how to COMPREHEND the Japanese writing system (from an Americans pov?
I keep wondering if I see __ symbol does this ALWAYS sound like this, is it always written like this.. etc. For example in English you see the letter "A" and.. nearly every time you see this letter you can at least expect to make the constant or vowel sound A. Same for Romance languages like in Spanish the letter Y may not sound like the English Y but still that letter represents a sound, and always will. You will always know what sound to make when you see that letter. Is Japanese the same way with their system? If not what are the differences?
Also how do they add on to the words? I tried this on my own and they claim a symbol + a symbol is supposed to = both symbols merged however it usually just looks like something entirely different.. I don't know. All of this is really confusing to me. I know you're all going to say "Study Kanjii" but I just get distracted when I see the actual symbols. I wonder what the sound means, how does it look when other things are added to it and overall I think my brain is just stuck in English and Romance mode.
What is good advice or resources on how to COMPREHEND the Japanese writing system (from an Americans pov?