Japanese Alphabet

 

Japanese Alphabet

Japanese alphabet is very different from the English alphabet. Whereas the English alphabet is made up of 26 letters that are used to form all our sounds and words, the Japanese alphabet is a phonetic alphabet of 48 sounds. These sounds are formed with 5 vowels (a, e, i, o and u) and 14 consonants (k, s, t, h, m, y, r, w, g, z, d, b, p and n). Each sound is represented by a character and made up of 1-3 letters. For example, the sound ‘shi’ is represented by a Hiragana character that almost looks like an incomplete U.

In some ways, it makes a lot more sense to base a written language around how things sound. The English language can be confusing. We have so many different rules and exceptions to the rules that mean the same groups of letters are pronounced differently depending on the situation. For example, the letter ‘o’ is pronounced one way in the word ‘pot’ and another way in the word ‘redo.’ In Japanese, the sound ‘o’ is pronounced the same regardless of the word it is in.

You would think then that once you learn how to identify Japanese characters, reading them could actually be simpler than reading English. Unfortunately though, this is where a lot of people come unstuck (even Japanese people). You see, the Japanese language actually has three distinctly different sets of characters – Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.

Hiragana is a set of 48 characters that represent sounds in the Japanese language. It is generally taught first and can be used to represent every word in Japanese. Unfortunately though, it is not. Instead, it is used in schools before students have had the chance to learn Kanji, when there is no Kanji to represent the word and when the writer has forgotten the Kanji symbol.

Katakana is another set of 48 characters used to represent the same 48 sounds as Hiragana. But why have another Japanese alphabet for exactly the same words? Katakana was originally developed from more complex kanji symbols as a form of shorthand. The short, straight strokes and angular corners of Katakana made it quick and easy to write. Today Katakana is generally reserved for use with foreign words (like banana), foreign names (like Matthew) and technical or scientific words.

Kanji is the most complex of the Japanese writing systems as it is made up of modified Chinese characters. It is used mostly for nouns, adjectives and verbs and is written in conjunction with Hiragana and Katakana.

The easiest and more effective way to learn the Japanese alphabet and how to write Japanese is to take an interactive Japanese language course like Rocket Japanese. I used Rocket Japanese myself and found it made learning easy and so much fun. The teacher is a native Japanese speaker so you not only learn how to pronounce things properly, but you gain a unique understanding of the language and the Japanese culture at the same time.

Rocket Japanese focuses heavily on learning conversational Japanese that you can actually use but also includes comprehensive lessons on Japanese grammar and written Japanese which make the seemingly daunting task of learning Japanese simple.

This dynamic course also comes with MegaHiragana, an interactive learning computer game that makes learning how to read and write Hiragana completely painless. It’s the most entertaining way to learn the Japanese alphabet that I’ve ever come across.

And my favourite part is you can download it all immediately. There’s no waiting around for a box to arrive in the mail. You can get started straight away.

For more information on Rocket Japanese and to sign up for your free mini course, please click here.