User:SuperMidget/Japanese

Overview
The Japanese Language implements three non-western writing systems:


 * Hiragana　ひらがな
 * Katakana　カタカナ
 * Chinese Characters　漢字

A Japanese sentence can - and often will - incorporate all of these writing systems. Each writing system has it's own function and use. In the next sections, each will be explained thoroughly. Besides the three mentioned systems, occasionally Alphabet (Abc…), Arabic numerals (１２３…) and Roman numerals (ⅠⅡⅢ…) are used.

When looking at the example sentence on the right, a few things are notable:
 * Japanese doesn't ordinarily contain spaces.
 * Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji accompany eachother.
 * Note: colors as illustrated above
 * Writing direction is left to right.
 * Note: Vertical style top to bottom is common in newspapers and paper magazines.
 * All glyphs have dimensions of equally large squares.

Japanese Syllables & Sounds
Though arbitrary, the Japanese language is said to have 50 sounds (5 vowels × 10 consonants). There are actually more than 50 sounds, but this will be explained later.

Each sound starts with a consonant, followed by a vowel.
 * Except for:
 * Single vowels あ い う え お (a i u e o)
 * The ending sound ん (n)
 * Combined consonants

Sounds in Japanese for example are:
 * う (u)
 * か (ka)
 * が (ga)
 * て (te)
 * の (no)

Pronunciation
For people who haven't learned Hiragana and Katakana yet, it's necessary to write Japanese words with Roman Alphabet. Converting from Japanese to Roman Alphabet is often called Romanization or Transcription. Another popular word to indicate Romanized text is "romaji", after the Japanese word ローマ字 roomaji, meaning "Roman Characters".

There are a number of ways to transcribe Japanese of which two are most common:


 * Hepburn System
 * Yale

Hiragana
Hiragana is a writing system in which each sound is represented by a symbol. Taking the table on the right, combining the s-collumn with the u-row makes the sound and symbol す (su). Note that ん n is a single consonant and is 'not followed by a vowel. There is no system in the shape of the symbols. Though some look similar, this has not much to do with their pronunciation.

Each sound existent in Japanese can be written in Hiragana. Therefor, theoretically, Japanese could be written entirely in Hiragana. However, Chinese Characters had long become the foundation of the Japanese language before Hiragana came to be, so the writing of Chinese Characters had been, and is maintained even now.



Katakana
Just like Hiragana, the Katakana chart consists of the 50 symbols representing the same sounds. The only feature to Katakana that is not inherent to Hiragana, is the lengthening bar (ー), used to duplicate the previous vowel. In Hiragana vowel repetitions (or long vowels) are simply "spelled out" by an extra syllable.


 * カ 　ka
 * カー 　kaa (car)

Katakana has several uses:
 * For writing words imported from foreign languages
 * Putting emphasis on a word (compare CAPITAL LETTERS; bold)
 * As some other form of style

Other examples: 
 * コンピューター 　konpyuutaa (computer)
 * ナイフ 　naifu (knife)
 * カード 　kaado (card)

Combined Consonants
The Hiragana and Katakana chart show all the syllables currently in use in Japanese, but one can not produce all sounds by writing them this way. Some Kana's can be combined in a specific way to form extra sounds. This phenomenon happens as well in Hiragana and in Katakana. The system is as following:


 * An i-vowel syllable (such as き ki, に ni, み mi)
 * Followed by a small version of や ya, ゆ yu or よ yo
 * The small versions are: ゃ ya, ゅ yu and ょ yo

Examples in actual words:


 * きゅうどう kyuudou (Art of Japanese Archery)
 * ショー syoo (show)
 * ニューヨーク nyuuyooku (New York)

Glottal Stop
As a final chapter of Japanese Sounds and Kana, this one is about the Glottal Stop which occurs in Japanese. The Glottal Stop (holding one's breath / stopping air flow in the middle of a word) is written with a small つ tsu (っ). In romaji this is expressed by duplicating the following consonant.


 * ねこ neko (cat)
 * ねっこ nekko (root - i.e. of a plant)

In most West European languages a double consonant changes the sound of the previous vowel. Such as later and latter. This is not the case in transcriptions of Japanese as a glottal stop should have no effect on the pronunciation of the vowels.

Speakers of languages that don't implement glottal stops as much, often have difficulties in recognizing and correctly pronouncing words with glottal stops.

Glottal Stops and double vowels:
 * きた kita (I came; south)
 * きった kitta (I cut - p.t.)
 * きいた kiita (I asked; I listened)

In all these words the vowels and consonants are pronounced the same. As a conclusion, one could say that paying attention to vowel lengths and glottal stops is quite important.