Lesson 3 - Japanese Writing Systems

The written Japanese is made up of three quite different writing systems: kanji, hiragana and katakana characters, which are used in combination.  In this blog, I'll use these three alphabets and the roman alphabet (mainly).

Katakana characters represent exactly the same sounds as hiragana alphabet, so in principle, all words can be written in katakana. But, In fact, we use katakana in the same way as we use italics, to write foreign words, exclamations, interjections and onomatopoeias.

Example of how kanji, hiragana and katakana are used together in a sentence:
Mike's school in is Yokohama.

Lesson 2 - Consonants

We can find 16 consonants in the Japanese alphabet and language: 

B, D, F, G, H, J, K, M, N, P, R, S, T, W, Y, Z

Most of the consonants sounds are pronounced as they are in English. A few differences:

[ts] - usually appears only before the vowel [u]. There are only a few examples where it comes at the beginning or middle, like "tsunami" and "tsetse fly".

[g] - pronounced as in "get", "go" or "gain". 

[w] - pronounced as in "want". Pratice saying [wa] without rounding your lips, as with [u] and [o].  

[h / f] - [h] is written before [a, i, e, o, y] and [f] is written before [u]. But [f] is pronounced with only a slight amount of friction between the upper and lower lips. Examples: "Fuji" sounds like who-ji; "Futari" sounds like "who-tari". 

[r] - represents a sound which is halfway between "L" and "R". 

[n] - before [t, ts, ch, s, d, j, z, n, r] represents a nasal sound held for one beat. ex: nonda, pronounced no-n-da. Same happens to [m] before [p, b, m] and to [ng] before [k, g, ng]. 

Sometimes you'll see words with double consonants in the middle, like "atta", "kippu", "gakkoo". As with the vowels, these doubled sounds should be held for twice the lenght of a single sound: a-t-ta, ki-p-pu, ga-k-koo. 

Lesson 1 - Vowels

First of all, each vowel is always said in the same way.

Sometimes, you'll see the same vowel in a row (e.g. uu). This means that the sound is twice as long as a single vowel.

The order of the vowels, in japanese: a - i - u - e - o

Vowels:
あ "a" - pronounced as in Kawasaki, Ah!
い "i" - pronounced as in eat, kimono
う "u" - pronounced as in sumoo, boot
え  "e" - pronounced as in zen, men
お "o" - pronounced as in Hiroshima, open

There are a few cases where the vowel sound almost disappears - devoiced vowels.

The vowels i and u tend to be dropped/whispered, usually when they're between consonants like p, t, k, ch, ts, h or when they're at the end of a word.

Example: "desu", sounds like "des" ; "yoshi!", sounds like "yosh!"