Hi Everyone, I noticed that there are some words in Romaji where certain letters are silent for example like desu. In English I was taught to sound out the words when spelling them; however, this did not always work for words that had silent letters in them. When it comes to spelling in Hiragana, especially with the silent letters, do we use the characters that represent this sound or do we still use characters like すto represent the su in words like desu? I am a little confused on the spelling method behind Hiragana and other Japanese characters. Thank you, Kerry

Konnichiwa Kerry-san, In Japanese speech, you will encounter words, such as DESU/MASU (です、ます) where the SU is omitted - or very faint. However, in writing, it must have the す. When writing in Hiragana, you must write each syllable, whether it is silent when said out aloud or not. It is like in English, when you say "wanna" for "want to" or "gonna" for "going to". If you were to write our these phrases, in a report, for example, you don't want to write "wanna" or "gonna" (unless in extremely colloquial writings). Hope that helps! -Sayaka :P

さやかさん、 あなたはいいせんせいです。 イサク。

イサクさん、 ありがとうございます。 日本語の勉強、頑張って下さい。 （にほんごのべんきょう、がんばってください。） さやか