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This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of Japanese on Wikipedia. It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Japanese in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them.
Transliteration, which adapts written form without altering the pronunciation when spoken out, is opposed to letter transcription, which is a letter by letter conversion of one language into another writing system. Still, most systems of transliteration map the letters of the source script to letters pronounced similarly in the target script ...
The list below shows the Japanese readings of letters in Katakana, for spelling out words, or in acronyms. For example, NHK is read enu-eichi-kē ( エヌ・エイチ・ケー ) . These are the standard names, based on the British English letter names (so Z is from zed , not zee ), but in specialized circumstances, names from other languages ...
However, unlike kanji, kana have no meaning, and are used only to represent sounds. Hiragana are generally used to write some Japanese words and given names and grammatical aspects of Japanese. For example, the Japanese word for "to do" (する suru) is written with two hiragana: す (su) + る (ru).
Furigana are also often used in foreign-language textbooks for Japanese learners to indicate pronunciation. The words are written in the original foreign script, such as hangul for Korean, and furigana is used to indicate the pronunciation. According to Ministry of Education guidelines, and the opinions of educators, the use of Japanese ...
Hiragana, the main Japanese syllabic writing system, derived from a cursive form of man'yōgana, a system where Chinese ideograms were used to write sounds without regard to their meaning. Originally, the same syllable (more precisely, mora ) could be represented by several more-or-less interchangeable kanji, or different cursive styles of the ...
Japanese does not have separate l and r sounds, and l-is normally transcribed using the kana that are perceived as representing r-. [2] For example, London becomes ロンドン (Ro-n-do-n). Other sounds not present in Japanese may be converted to the nearest Japanese equivalent; for example, the name Smith is written スミス (Su-mi-su).
Many generalizations about Japanese pronunciation have exceptions if recent loanwords are taken into account. For example, the consonant [p] generally does not occur at the start of native (Yamato) or Chinese-derived (Sino-Japanese) words, but it occurs freely in this position in mimetic and foreign words. [2]