Hi everyone,

I'm hoping some native Japanese speakers will be able to help with a few questions that I have.

I am only starting to learn Japanese and I'm wondering about a few things that I don't find explanations for in books and learning materials.

1) Struggling with Katakana and Hiragana, I'm wondering how you distinguish between the small sokuon (促音)? and a normal つ.

Are there just rules for when it's a normal "tsu" (きつと - kitsuto) and when it will double up on the next consonant (きっと - kitto)? (Not sure if they are real words, I'm just trying to give an example.)

2) Maybe it's just because I'm still a beginner, but how do you know to "read ahead" in case the next kana alters the pronunciation of the current one? For example きゃ - ki becomes kya.

Now, being fluent in English, I know that I read English "words" at a time, so recognizing a few characters at once is not unusual.

However, in Japanese, there are normally no spaces between "words", so how do you tell where a word starts and where it ends? Do you just recognize patterns of kana? Or do you read a whole sentence at a time?

3) How do you distinguish between such small differences in the kana?? Especially with small fonts?

For example, in some fonts (especially small fonts) with はばぱ there is hardly a difference with ha and ba, and pa looks like it could be ba! Do you just read the kana in the context of the word?

4) I'm starting to learn kanji, and I'm finding that some kanji have no meaning on its own, unless paired with another kanji.

For instance 音 is on and 促音 is sokuon, but 促 doesn't seem to be a word by itself? Is that true?

5) In proper Japanese, what are the rules for when to use a kanji word and when to spell it out in kana?

For instance, everyone knows よろしくおねがいします

And in kanji it is 宜しくお願いします

But I've seen a native Japanese writing よろしくお願いします. If they spelled "願" with kanji, why would they not also spell "宜" in the same sentence? What is the "proper" rule in, say, a newspaper or an email between two native Japanese speakers?

A lot of questions, but I hope someone can help clear up the confusion! 宜しくお願いします~!  ( I think? )

Oh, and if you have any English questions, please feel free to ask! ^_^

- Andrew (アンデル?)