Well actually I just came here till I get more materials to learn
Japanese. But why am I learning it you ask? At first it started with
Spanish then I was always intrested in Japanese,(Every kids dream) so
when I started I learned many things about it I wouldn't have known
otherwise and I learned about their syllabaries and the kanji. I was
imediatly intrested in those (can't explain why its just english words
seem so plain and the kanji are more expressive) and started studying
Japanese on the internet. I started with the kanji but then moved
alittle into the hiragana through suggestions on the sites. So then I
tried that and at that time started thinking it might be useful to get
a book. I got a great book for the kana and don't even need the other
(makes me feel wasteful). I can now read most of the kana without
problem (a few still give me trouble :l ). Now I am ordering a book
made by the same person for kanji. I am also ordering Japanese grammer
books as I understand thats very important to understand the correct
meaning of a sentence even if I know the words (exspecially since they
order their sentences differently). Now I know very little but hope
through reading the grammer books I can learn alot of basic hiragana
words; and until those arrive I thought I might come here since I'm
bored and learning Japanese is actually pretty fun. So at this point I
am learning Japanese almost as a hobby and was started by my intrest of
languages going over board when one day a Spanish substitute in school
used some phrases and I was so curious I started learning that then
went over to Japanese (though I know a bit of Spanish now).

So my next question would be can you tell me if there are any certain
rules to how words are made (in hiragana) like do they have similar
roots? (ex. centi=100, meter=standard unit of measure, centimeter=100th
of a meter)

Thank you for all your help.