The first of the Beginning Lessons is now out. This series will cover material typical of a first course in Japanese. The first lesson, Names and Introductions, will be one of two sections on basic expressions, which will be followed by basic sentence structures and vocabulary.
Several coming grammar topics will still be under Introduction to the Japanese Language. The basic idea is that each part will be somewhat self contained, but that the beginning lessons will rely on the intro as background. Hopefully the way I expect this to work will become clear. In this most recent one, I put the stuff on Hiragana and pronunciation as “recommended background”, with links to specific sections throughout the lesson for easy reference.
I realize now that by jumping ahead I’ve created some gaps. In particular, です/desu, ます/masu, and は/wa will all be covered soon. Also, I came up with the idea of relegating some information to “FAQ” sections to keep the beginning lessons a little cleaner. I also think a quick reference page for each lesson formatted for printing might be useful. These would certainly be something that I do later on though.