Title

Common nouns comprise the majority of nouns in Japanese just how they do in English. They represent the names of anything and everything that fits under the title it forms. For instance, ki 木 means "tree" and is used to describe any and all trees. To be more specific, you could add a modifier to the word or you could use the name of the tree you want to talk about, which will also be a noun. As an example, yanagi 柳 means "willow." 

Learning common nouns will be a major part of studying Kanji as most will refer to a noun one way or another. Although it is not expected of you to learn the Kanji spelling of every noun you learn, it will be in your best interest to at least see what the normal spelling of any noun you learn is and use the numerous tools available online to provide you its pronunciation for whenever you forget or are just now encountering the word. 

Just as in English, proper nouns refer to specific place, organization, or place names. Although capitalization doesn't exist in Japanese orthography, proper nouns are often affixed with titles of respect called keishō 敬称. For instance, Kaneko 金子 is a surname, and when one is referring to Mr./Mrs. Kaneko respectfully, you will attach the ending -san さん to be polite, producing Kaneko-san 金子さん.

Place names are perhaps even more important than personal names because everyone needs to know where they're going. There are currently 195 countries, 50 states in the USA, and 47 prefectures of Japan. These place names will likely form the bulk of the place names you learn in Japanese in the first few years of study. 

This isn't the extent of place names, though, as you'll also need to know how to refer to islands, mountains, lakes, streets, etc. Especially when you go to Japan, words like Fuji-san 富士山 (Mt. Fuji) and Biwa-ko 琵琶湖 (Lake Biwa) will be incredibly important to your touring endeavors.  

Similarly to personal names, the spellings of place names will often involve very specific Kanji. So long as you know to pronounce the name of where you're going, you will likely have no problem getting there in Japan as many place names will be written in English or at the very least have their names written in furigana on signs.

Slightly overlapping with place names, knowing names of organizations such as businesses, institutions, universities, churches, shrines, etc. will be a significant percentage of the nouns you learn. If you end up living in Japan, you will need to know the names of stores, banks, train stations, parks, theme parks, etc. If you want to visit that huge shrine in Izumo, you should probably know it's called Izumo Taisha 出雲大社. If you want to have a phone, you may want to learn the names of some providers like NTT docomo. And yes, いまび counts as a proper noun. 

A pronoun (daimeishi 代名詞) indirectly refers to an entity that involves a person, direction, or thing. The meaning of said entity is determined by context. For instance, proper names are pronouns because they stand in place of the actual person/thing they reference. Proper names can also be shared with others or other things, and so we need context to truly understand what is meant by say the name "Seth." This can refer to the creator of this curriculum, or it can refer to any other person whose name is "Seth." Because of this, the word "Seth" is a pronoun. 

Similarly, words like "here" and "there" or even words like "this" and "that" are also pronouns. This is because no one can ascertain what they refer to without context.

Generally, when we think of pronouns, we think about pronouns that are used to establish grammatical person. For instance, in English we make the following distinctions in grammatical person.

In English, gender and number both play roles in determining what grammatical person is used in a sentence. In Japanese, however, there isn't a single pronoun that corresponds to each of the pronouns for grammatical person. Meaning, there is more than one word for "I," "we," etc. This is because all pronouns in Japanese started out as typical nouns or as vaguer words that didn't match up with the concept of pronouns in the English sense.

 In Japanese, pronouns differ by their politeness, the demographics of the speaker (age, sex, occupation), as well as to whom the person is talking to/about. One's dialect also plays a major role in pronoun use, and many dialectal pronouns are understood and used heavily on TV, in manga and anime, as well as literature. 

With all that being the case, it really isn't possible to just learn one word and think that you're done because you'll need to understand what is spoken to you as well as choose the right pronoun in any given situation. For the purposes of starting out, we will start out by working with the most essential pronouns and then return to the topic of pronouns in Lesson 84 for more in-depth coverage.

There are three essential pronouns that mean "I": watashi わたし, watakushi わたくし, boku ぼく. 

■わたし（私）: All beginner texts will introduce this word as the basic word for "I." Without a doubt, it is the best equivalent that Modern Japanese has to offer. However, its overuse is problematic as Japanese speakers themselves hardly use it in sentences. When it does appear, the speaker is usually specifically bringing the focus of conversation on themselves. Overall, female speakers do tend to use it more than men in casual conversation as men prefer using other pronouns in those situations.
Plural: わたしたち

■わたくし（私）: The original form of わたし. わたくし is the preferred first person pronoun in honorific speech. Like first person pronouns in general, it is not used constantly, but it is important to make sure you are pairing it with respectful language. 
Plural: わたくしたち*

■ぼく（僕）: This pronoun is becoming the preferred pronoun for men of all ages, but there are situations in which women may be heard using it. The word has very humble origins, and it is actually becoming more commonly heard even in honorific speech (by men only). Although the word is not 'gendered' per say, Japanese society does expect the speaker to be male for this word most of the time. 
Plural: ぼくたち

Japanese does have a way of making these pronouns plural. Without having to delve into more grammar at this point in time, you can certainly add the suffix -tachi たち as indicated to make these words plural to mean "me," but as for わたくしたち, many speakers feel that わたくしども is more correct. 

The most important thing about second and third person pronouns you should know is when not to use them, which is most of the time. Second person is particularly avoided. Although there are many words that mean "you," they all have special nuances that may be easily overlooked by a beginner. Third person pronouns are no different in having special nuances, but at least there aren't as many of them.

■あなた: This word is arguably the only word for "you" that should pertain to you as a beginner. It is understood that you are learning, and so most natives would not fault you for using it incorrectly. Try only using this word when you absolutely do not know the name of the person that you are talking to. It is custom in Japan to refer to people in the third person. Even when you are asking questions like "Is this your pen?", it is more proper to ask, "Is this Kim's pen?" despite Kim being the person you're talking to. This is simply the norm. We will eventually come back to what sort of nuances this word has along with the many other words for "you" in Lesson 84. 
Plural: あなたたち

■かれ(彼): This is the Japanese equivalent of "he," but it is not used as much as its English counterpart because it is custom to refer to people with their actual name and/or title. When it is used, it is often used to mean "boyfriend" instead of "he," especially in casual conversation. 
Plural: かれら*

■かのじょ(彼女): This is the Japanese equivalent of "she" but it is not used as much as its English counterpart for the same reason かれ isn't, the reason being that it may mean "girlfriend" in casual conversation. It is worth noting that both かれ and かのじょ should be treated as "he" and "she" respectively during polite conversations.

Plural: かのじょたち

For reasons tied to the origins of the word itself and the possible plural markers in Japanese, かれたち is essentially not used for "they," and in its place, かれら is overwhelmingly used. This word is actually used quite a lot and can be used to mean "they" to describe groups of people even if women are included. However, if the group is exclusively composed of women, then you should use かのじょたち. 

A pronoun that refers to a place or thing is called a demonstrative. In addition to the basic pronouns for person we just learned, you also need to learn the basic demonstrative problems to make basic conversation possible. 

Unfortunately, none of these words are used exactly like their English counterparts either. This means that we will have to revisit this topic to truly grasp them, but for now, the goal is to get you started with the absolute essential words. For these pronouns, the distance between the entity (place/thing) to the speaker is what will determine which word is used.

You may have noticed earlier that "it" was not mentioned. This is because the best equivalent happens to be それ. However, in situations in English where the word "it" would overwhelmingly be chosen, the word is simply dropped upon translating into Japanese. 

When speaking about entities physically visible, there is a three-way distinction made based on the proximity of the entity from the speaker and listener. An entity may be close to the speaker, close to the listener but not the speaker, or far from both the speaker and the listener(s). When the entity discussed is not physically visible, there is a two-way distinction made based on who knows about the entity in question. The criterion then becomes whether only the speaker knows about the entity or if both the speaker and listener(s) know about it.

As mentioned before, neither nouns nor pronouns conjugate in Japanese, but they do conjugate in English. The most important conjugation that pronouns have in English is the possessive conjugation. For example, the possessive form of "I" is "mine" and its adjective form is "my." What about in Japanese?

In Japanese, possession is expressed by simply adding the particle no の to a noun or pronoun. That's it!  

Who would have thought that there would have been differences in how Japanese treats nouns and pronouns! 
Before we head onto learning about the copula (to be), just remember that your studying of nouns and pronouns isn't over yet. We haven't even gotten to learn about an entire group of nouns called dummy nouns (keishiki meishi 形式名詞) that we will have to look at later on in いまび, not to mention all the other demonstratives and pronouns that exist. The goal here is to go through topics one at a time. For now, focus on learning the nouns that can be made with the Kanji that you learn and try utilizing Japanese pronouns in your English for lack of better practice until you're able to form some decent sentences.