Japanese Writing
It will be helpful to know the basics of Japanese pronunciation to understand the phonetic writing systems of Japanese. This website has information about the basic sounds of Japanese with links to audio files in case you want to hear.
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Click the button here to be directed to a site that walks you through the history of the Japanese writing systems.
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There are three kinds of Japanese written characters:
All three can be used together in sentences. Many nouns and roots of words are written in Kanji. Hiragana is used to represent Japanese words and grammatical elements, while Katakana is usually used for words of foreign origin.
Hiragana and Katakana are not hard to learn. My high school students are able to pick up each writing system in about a week.
Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic characters, meaning each character represents a sound.
Each of these syllabaries (alphabets) has 46 basic characters (sounds).
As with capital letters and lower case letters in English, there is a Hiragana and Katakana symbol for each sound.
For instance, there is an ‘O’ in both Hiragana お and Katakana オ, just as there is an upper case 'O' and a lower case 'o' in English.
In World Language Orientation we will be learning 20 of the 46 Katakana characters so we can learn to write out names (which are of foreign origin.)
- Kanji (kahn-jee) 漢字
- Hiragana (hee-rah-gah-nah) ひらがな
- Katakana (ka-ta-ka-na) カタカナ
All three can be used together in sentences. Many nouns and roots of words are written in Kanji. Hiragana is used to represent Japanese words and grammatical elements, while Katakana is usually used for words of foreign origin.
Hiragana and Katakana are not hard to learn. My high school students are able to pick up each writing system in about a week.
Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic characters, meaning each character represents a sound.
Each of these syllabaries (alphabets) has 46 basic characters (sounds).
As with capital letters and lower case letters in English, there is a Hiragana and Katakana symbol for each sound.
For instance, there is an ‘O’ in both Hiragana お and Katakana オ, just as there is an upper case 'O' and a lower case 'o' in English.
In World Language Orientation we will be learning 20 of the 46 Katakana characters so we can learn to write out names (which are of foreign origin.)
You can download an extra copy
of the Katkana student flashcards here if you need a second copy. |
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Online Study Tools
- Click on the images below to access online flashcards and games.
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PROSPEROUS * SERVANT * VILLAGE * RETREAT
Does this mean I am a prosperous servant living in a village retreat? I could go for some relaxation in a nice Japanese village retreat about now. :-) |
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