Lesson 1: We Come In Peace

こんにちは皆さん。今日、日本語の軸紹介を習いたいと思います。

Hi everyone. Today, I'll be teaching you how to introduce yourself in Japanese and Japanese greetings.

To start off, I'd like to introduce to you how my blog is going to work. Everything I write will have the kana or Japanese characters, which includes the three alphabets of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, the romaji or the pronunciation written in the Roman alphabet, and the English translation, like this:

With that being said, let's begin.

In a self-introduction, you do more than just give your name, you also express your thanks for meeting someone. The most basic introduction goes a little like this:

はじめまして and よろしく should always be the start and end of a self-introduction in Japanese. What you put in the middle is up to you. In Japanese, your name is given with the surname first. This is because it is polite to call someone by their family name and calling someone by their given name implies a level of intimacy reserved for friends or family. For example, a Japanese person might give their name like this:

In this case, refer to Tanaka Yamamoto as Yamamoto-san. Or someone your own age might introduce themselves like this:

In this case, it's alright to call Yuki Miyami by her first name. In your self-introduction, never use honorifics. This is very disrespectful and kind of arrogant, honorifics are only meant to be used on other people out of respect.

Next up: Japanese Greetings.

A little bit of back-up, plain style language is used among friends and family. Formal language is everyone else, strangers, work colleagues, teachers, doctors, etc. 

So, that's all for today. Until next time, じゃあね!