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Kokiri Forest - Learning Japanese with Ocarina of Time 2


Part 1 focuses on the monologue by the tree for a complex sentence that you can practice breaking down to help make sense of sentence structure. It was, chronologically, the first dialogue in the game, but this one will focus on easier sentences and some kanji you should learn early on.

Kanji to learn: 木 (link); 森 (link); 子 (link); 今 (link); the next two are important despite only being see once or twice; 中 (link); and 出 (link). The kanji listed are all grade one except for 今 which is grade two. However, 今 is very common. A lot of kanji taught in higher grades are just as common as the lower grades, in some cases even more so. Take watashi (私) for instance. It isn't taught until grade six (though most kids already know it) and it's the letter for "I", or "me" when referring to oneself.

Kokiri Forest




This place is mentioned all over the game, and is fairly easy to remember. It's the katakana for Kokiri (コ 'ko'; キ 'ki'; and リ 'ri') and the kanji for forest (森, pronounced mori) put together in the possessive using の (no), meaning it's the Kokiri Forest, i.e., it's not just any forest it's the forest belonging to the Kokiri. Altogether: コキリの森 (kokiri no mori). That's it, just five letters. If you've already learned katakana and hiragana (which you should before even attempting to write in Japanese) it should be a breeze.

The kanji 森 is just three tree kanji. Two are side-by-side together underneath a wide short one. Tree 木 is read ki (き), but forest 森 is mori (もり). Click the link to the letters in the 'Kanji to learn' section above for instructions on how to write them. Don't confuse the letter 林 (hayashi) to be a synonym of 森. It refers to groupings of trees and shrubs, but not for large expanses of tall trees as 森 does. See here for an in-depth explanation on the difference: https://www.italki.com/question/304401.

WILL ADD ON TO THIS AND WILL CONTINUE EXPANDING ON THE PART 1 POST


For now, to balance video editing and posting, I'll do one post per video. I do plan to return to the older videos now that I have a mic and editing software to work with. - 7/21/18
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