There are four basic character sets used in writing modern Japanese, katakana, hiragana, kanji, and romaji. If you're reading this page, I assume you've already got a pretty good grasp of romaji, because it's the Roman alphabet used in one way or another for most of the Western European languages. I think we can safely skip romaji.
Katakana
Katakana is a very angular script, and for me was the easiest to learn. Composed of 46 basic yet very distinctive characters, katakana can be used to express any sound in the Japanese language. The first 5 characters correspond to 5 vowels common to many languages.
- A sounds like the a in the English word father.
- I sounds like the i in the English word machine.
- U sounds like the u in the English word truth.
- E sounds like the e in the English word prey.
- O sounds like the o in the English word most.
The following forty characters are the equivalents of an English consonant followed by one of the above vowels, and the remaining character is a consonant by itself, equivalent to the English n.
Click this button to start the tutorial direct from its source:
Click this button to start the tutorial direct from its source:
- Foreign names, like mine--Blake Sterzinger.
- Borrowed foreign words, like computer or beer.
- Company names, like Toyota or Yamaha.
- New words in Japanese, like pachinko or karaoke.
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