かな (Kana)
The first thing you'll notice about Japanese is that it looks very odd. (Well, unless you speak Chinese, in which case it just looks a bit odd.) That's because "alphabet" comes from the Greek alpha and beta, and so has nothing to do with Japanese. The closest equivalent is the かな (kana), a set of basic syllables from which words are built. As such, learning them is something of a priority.
Well, technically, they aren't syllables by the strict definition. They're sounds made up of a consonant and/or a vowel.
There are around 100 of them.
Stop panicking.
Take them slowly, and practice reading and writing just a few at a time, over a period of days or weeks. They will sink in eventually, and it will become second nature. Just like the alphabet did. To help, we'll provide romanised versions of text in addition to the かな for the first part of this guide. Read and remember it, then recite it to yourself as you read the Japanese, associating each syllable with its symbol. To save space, words we've already done will have their romanisations available by hovering your mouse over them. Romanised text is called ローマジ (roumaji), and a popular romanisation is the Hepburn system.
One of the many benefits of this syllabic representation is that you always know how to pronounce things. Smile about that. In European languages, the spelling of a word may have no bearing on its pronunciation. Look at the suffix -ough
, for example: Cough, bough, dough, tough, and lough are all pronounced differently. If you don't recognise the word "lough" there, then that's your fault. How many ways of saying it did you try? My point exactly. かな does away with this problem entirely. A ば is pronounced "ba" no matter where it is.
Additionally, they all have the same length when it comes to sounding them out. Practice them with strict, slow rhythm at first, and then slowly increase the BPM. This does have the slightly odd effect of making んえ (n'e) twice the length of ね (ne), which is why the former was romanised with an apostrophe.
ひらがな (Hiragana)/かたかな (Katakana)
There are two different sets of かな, named ひらがな and かたかな. They both represent the same sounds, but which one you use depends on what you're writing. If that sounds bizarre and overwhelmingly daunting, just remember that we have a similar idea in English in the form of upper and lower case. Whether you choose to learn them simultaneously (analogous to learning "aA, bB, cC") or independently ("a, b, c, ... A, B, C") is entirely a matter of choice. Go with whatever works for you.
ひらがな
ひらがな is "proper" Japanese, but I mean that in the same way that I'd mean lower case was the proper alphabet. Japanese words are written with a combination of かんじ (kanji, Chinese characters) and ひらがな. かんじ is a hugely complex monster that we won't even begin to consider until much later. This unfortunately means that most Japanese will be unreadable, but that's what your electronic dictionary is for. For now, we will chop the monster up into its component ひらがな.
A quick note about pronunciation: It's difficult to give good descriptions in text. Find something to listen to, or persuade a friendly Japanese to help.
Another quick note: -u sounds are often voiced very quickly or dropped altogether. For example, です (desu) sounds similar to the way you would pronounce "dess" in English.
| -A | -I | -U | -E | -O | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| - | あ | い | う | え | お | 'a' as in English "an."
'i' as the 'e' in English "he," but shorter. 'u' as the 'oo' in English "cool," but shorter and with the lips relaxed. 'e' as in English "pet." 'o' as in English "off." |
| K | か | き | く | け | こ | |
| S | さ | し | す | せ | そ | し is more like English "shi." |
| T | た | ち | つ | て | と | ち is more like English "chi." つ is more like English "tsu." |
| N | な | に | ぬ | ね | の | |
| H | は | ひ | ふ | へ | ほ | ふ sounds like a breath, half way to English "foo." |
| M | ま | み | む | め | も | |
| Y | や | ゆ | よ | |||
| R | ら | り | る | れ | ろ | 'r' is half way between English 'l' and 'r'. It's a little like the repeated sound in a rolled 'r'. |
| W | わ | を | Keep the lips relaxed. | |||
| G | が | ぎ | ぐ | げ | ご | As in the end of English "-ing." |
| Z | ざ | じ | ず | ぜ | ぞ | As in the English "-dz-". じ is more like English "ji." |
| D | だ | ぢ | づ | で | ど | ぢ and づ are pronounced as ち and つ. |
| B | ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ | |
| P | ぱ | ぴ | ぷ | ぺ | ぽ | |
| (No vowel) | ||||||
| N | ん | A normal 'n' sound, held for a whole syllable. | ||||
Notice that が, ざ, だ and ば are written the same as か, さ, た and は, but with two small strokes to the upper right. ぱ is also は, but with a circle.
ん is a tricky one, as fragments like んね and んえ are difficult to differentiate. Don't panic about it too much, though, as it's likely to be easy to tell which was meant by considering the words.
There are a few more syllables which are written using the -I form of either き, ぎ, し, じ, ち, に, ひ, び, ぴ, み or り, followed by a small ゃ, ゅ or ょ. These take the consonant sound from the first and the vowel sound from the second. The result is just one syllable long. They are summarised in the following table of approximate pronunciations:
| き- | ぎ- | し- | じ- | ち- | に- | ひ- | び- | ぴ- | み- | り- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ゃ | kya | gya | sha | ja | cha | nya | hya | bya | pya | mya | rya |
| ゅ | kyu | gyu | shu | ju | chu | nyu | hyu | byu | pyu | myu | ryu |
| ょ | kyo | gyo | sho | jo | cho | nyo | hyo | byo | pyo | myo | ryo |
I know that's a lot to take in, so don't try to do it all at once. Just practice a line or two at a time. Some of the sounds don't occur in English, and so may take a while to adapt to. ひゅ, for example, is one syllable - not two, as most people use when naming car manufacturer Hyundai. りゃ/りゅ/りょ are also quite difficult to wrap the tongue around in one syllable.
Vowels may be elongated (made twice as long) by writing the vowel again, but take note that え becomes えい, and お becomes おう. Thus, the full set of elongated vowels is: ああ, いい, うう, えい, おう. They are sometimes romanised by putting a circumflex over a single vowel.
Example:
とうきょう (to u kyo u, tôkyô) = Tokyo, which is four beats long.
Don't worry, now, there's only one more thing to discuss: tiny tsus. By putting a small っ before a consonant sound, the length of the consonant is doubled. The tsu itself is not pronounced, and it takes the form of an almost audible pause. If you say the word "bookkeeper" with only one 'k' sound, you'll notice a short silence after the 'oo.' That is the same sort of effect the tiny tsu has. It is romanised as a double consonant.
Example:
がっこう (ga kko u) = school.
がこう (ga ko u) = sketch
かたかな
You will be glad to know that かたかな has almost exactly the same rules as its cousin, so there's little more to learn. The only difference is in elongating the vowels, which is done with a simple ー instead of writing the second vowel. So, if you were writing the Tokyo example in かたかな (which you wouldn't, but just pretend for a moment) then it would be:
トーキョー (to u kyo u).
You wouldn't write this, because かたかな is mainly used when writing foreign words. 99% of the time, these words will be English, and so all you need do is sound them out and think a bit. Because not every sound in English is covered in Japanese, the pronunciations can differ somewhat. A rather classic example is r/l, which both Japanesify to the same sound, resulting in many "humourous" translation errors on the way back to English. Another is English v, which is usually replaced by the b sound as in ビデオ
(video) = "bideo". Remember when writing Japanese, though, that you translate the sound and not the spelling. The 'a' in "cake," for example, is not an ア but an エー. A list of common sounds is provided at the end.
You may also see proper Japanese words written this way in an attempt to make them stand out and look "cool" - a similar tactic to writing English words entirely in upper-case.
| -A | -I | -U | -E | -O | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| - | ア | イ | ウ | エ | オ |
| K | カ | キ | ク | ケ | コ |
| S | サ | シ | ス | セ | ソ |
| T | タ | チ | ツ | テ | ト |
| N | ナ | ニ | ヌ | ネ | ノ |
| H | ハ | ヒ | フ | ヘ | ホ |
| M | マ | ミ | ム | メ | モ |
| Y | ヤ | ユ | ヨ | ||
| R | ラ | リ | ル | レ | ロ |
| W | ワ | ヲ | |||
| G | ガ | ギ | グ | ゲ | ゴ |
| Z | ザ | ジ | ズ | ゼ | ゾ |
| D | ダ | ヂ | ヅ | デ | ド |
| B | バ | ビ | ブ | ベ | ボ |
| P | パ | ピ | プ | ペ | ポ |
| (No vowel) | |||||
| N | ン | ||||
The first thing to note is that the last few rows are produced from the first in the same way as the ひらがな were. The second thing is how similar the two sets are. Many of the かたかな are just ひらがな with the curvy bits straightened out, such as in ヤ／や, ヘ／へ, and リ／り.
And the contractions:
| キ- | ギ- | シ- | ジ- | チ- | ニ- | ヒ- | ビ- | ピ- | ミ- | リ- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ャ | kya | gya | sha | ja | cha | nya | hya | bya | pya | mya | rya |
| ュ | kyu | gyu | shu | ju | chu | nyu | hyu | byu | pyu | myu | ryu |
| ョ | kyo | gyo | sho | jo | cho | nyo | hyo | byo | pyo | myo | ryo |
Common English sounds:
| Sound | カタカナ |
|---|---|
| 'a' as in "cake" | エー (ei) |
| 'i' as in "kite" | アイ (ai) |
| v sounds | <use b instead> |
| consonants without vowels | <use the -u form> |
You may have to think a bit to translate longer words into English, as the slight sound variations can add up. It's like the aural equivalent of squinting at a pixellated image. If you really can't identify it, then look it up; it may be a word from another language.
Some examples: Provided without translation. I'm evil like that. Mwahahaha!
アイスクリーム (a i su ku ri i mu)
ニュース (nyu u su)
ホームペイジ (ho u mu pe i ji)
ドイツ (do i tsu) ...OK, I'll play fair. This is from the German, Deutsch.
Punctuation
Finally, it's a good idea to talk about punctuation and layout. Notice that each character fits neatly inside a square, so try to write as evenly as you can. Most of the time, you'll see Japanese written "our" way, read from left to right, and moving down a line when you run out of space. However, it may also be arranged in columns that move to the left,
e A x s a m i p n l e t . h i s
As for the punctuation itself, the Japanese comma and full stop (period) are 、 and 。 respectively. They are written in the bottom-left corner of the "box" when reading left-to-right, and the top-right corner when reading vertically. The exclamation mark ！ may also be used, and so can the question mark ？. The latter isn't actually necessary, though, as you'll find out later...
