Hiragana translation question

[silk600]

I've recently attempted to learn the kana, and I'm having trouble actually translating the symbols into sentences I can understand. I have a copy of 'Kanji de Manga', which I've just opened to try and learn some kanji.

I'm fine with memorising the kanji, but on the first to pages I have questions about the script.

hxxp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/silk600/firstplace.jpg

That's a photo of the first part. The hiragana there I'm having trouble translating. Does it translate to any of the following?

ichi cha kuu
ichi cha kutsu
ichi chiya kuu
ichi chiya kutsu

Or am I completely off?

And the second bit...

hxxp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/silk600/oneplusone.jpg

I've got this as:

shiyashin toroayo.
ichi tasu ichi wa?

Am I right? Also, how do you express spaces in hiragana? For example that 'shiyashin toroayo', I just guessed that the space goes there. I have no idea how many seperate words are in that saying (although I've probably translated that wrongly anyway)

I think after I've had a bit of practice using the kana in real situations (as opposed to just memorising the image) I'll get better, but at the moment it's really annoying that I can't even translate the first page of this book...

Any help is appreciated!

[Half-n-Half]

In the first picture, the hiragana part is, I'm pretty sure,"chiya kutsu".
The second part is, "Shiyashin toruwayo. Ichi tasu ichi wa?" I am not familiar with all of these words so I just used your spacing, although it could be different. In hiragana, you don't express spaces. Usually kanji is used with the hiragana to express words, ideas, verbs, etc. as well as particles that make it possible to discern between words.

[Glenn]

First one: itchaku (you understand what the "t" there does, right?)

It's going to be hard for you to try to reading words that should be written in kanji but are written with a mix of kanji and hiragana. Hell, I even have problems sometimes, like the other day when I saw 危ぐ and I was trying to figure out what verb that was, going through all kinds of readings for 危 (ayagu? ayaugu? abunagu?), then I realized it was supposed to be 危惧. If you're going to be reading stuff like that, get something with furigana. It'll make the whole process a lot easier.

As you are aware, the kanji 一 is read ichi in this instance. The chaku is 着. When kanji are put together, sometimes the readings undergo changes, and this is one of those cases. Ichichaku over time turned into itchaku (いっちゃく), likely due to rapid speech shortening the sounds. Similarly, hatsu+hyou becomes happyou, setsu+kin becomes sekkin, gaku+kou becomes gakkou, etc.

Also, that little tsu at the end there is like a signal to cut the sound off short. あっ！ would be like "ah!" said with a sharp break at the end. This you'll pick up on as you hear the language more and more (be sure to hear it a lot).

Second one: shashin toru wa yo
ichi tasu ichi wa?

Spaces don't really exist in Japanese writing. If something's written entirely in hiragana, I understand that there are spaces sometimes, but I'm not too sure. You're right, practice will help straighten this out, provided you understand it in the first place. :-)

[Half-n-Half]

Listen to Glenn, his Japanese is far superior to mine.

[silk600]

Thanks, both of you, for your help.
I assume that it's because it's teaching me the first 80 Kanji is the reason that It's using mostly hiragana instead of all kanji.
It's quite annoying how the pronunciation for the characters changes depending on what they're put next to... Not only are there far more characters than in English, but they're so much more ambiguous... Oh well. A challenge is good I guess. I assume that once my vocabulary expands, then reading Japanese will become a lot easier, as I will be able to guess the meaning of things more easily.
The usage of the small 'tsu' at the end of a word is new to me, I'll keep that in mind in future, thanks.