Before you start Unit 1, let's first get some things straight. I will briefly cover different aspects of the Japanese language that you may or may not have known beforehand. First, Japanese grammar is very different from English grammar, or any other language's grammar, for that matter. You need to keep this in mind at all times!! (Note: I have erased part of the original text where I said not to compare the grammar of different languages. That recommendation was inaccurate, so I apologize.)
Also keep in mind that while the majority of the Japanese in this tutorial is written with romanized characters (abcd), these letters are not the same as actual Japanese. The actual pronunciation of Japanese words is different from the phoenetic (how it sounds) spelling, although it may sound the same. There are always subtle nuances and sounds that come naturally to native speakers, but may be very difficult or boggling to students of a language. Just do your best, and learn from what you hear and see.
Now we will get into specifics. This is not intended to be an elaborate and complete guide to Japanese grammar; it is only a quick-and-easy summary of the basic things that you need to know about Japanese grammar, syntax, and language.
Desu
Desu is the Japanese word for "(it) is". It is pronounced "dess" with a very slight u or "oo" sound at the end. You already know this if you read the Pronunciation section. There are several different kinds of accents in Japan, though, just as there are Texan and New Yorker accents in the United States. In some regions of Japan, the "su" sound is fully pronounced with an "oo" sound at the end. Likewise, words may be pronounced differently than they are taught in most textbooks. This is because of culture and region difference; as long as you learn "standard" Japanese and have a good accent, Japanese people should be able to understand what you are saying. The different variations of a word are usually similar enough that one can understand the meaning.
Ka
Desu ka means "is it?" in Japanese. While desu means "it is", the ka serves as the question mark. Before the introduction of the Western writing system, Asian languages had no punctuation (I'm going to do a VERY quick summary here). This was often very confusing, as the meaning of any statement can be warped into many different ones, depending on how the statement is said. Eventually, punctuation was developed. China, Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries developed a period. This is basically a small circle (like an "o") written at the end of every statement. Asian languages are written in vertical lines from top to bottom, and read from the right-most line to the left-most line - basically, the opposite of Western languages. There was no symbol for a question, however; while I don't know very much about the Korean language, the Japanese and Chinese languages each have their own character for a question mark. Instead of writing "?", the particular character is used at the end of a sentence and is followed by the Asian period (o). Thus ka is the equivalent of a question mark (?). So:
This is why, typically, you will not see question marks in textbooks that teach Japanese to native English-speakers. So, instead of seeing
Anata wa dare desu ka?, you will see
Anata wa dare desu ka.. Because the ka already means "?", you don't need to write another one! All you need is a period at the end.
This about covers the basic things that you need to know before launching into the first unit. If I think of something else, I will be sure to update the web site!! All updates are posted on the bottom of the main site in red font after they take place, and changed every update. If you have any questions or corrections, please feel free to e-mail me anytime at Animefane1@hotmail.com. As always, arigatou gozaimasu for your patience and interest!!