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The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis.
The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character or kana in each system.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji). [1] [2] [3] Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system.
All the other forms of hiragana and katakana developed before the 1900 codification are known as hentaigana (変体仮名, "variant kana"). Rules for their usage as per the spelling reforms of 1946, the gendai kana-zukai ( 現代仮名遣い , "present-day kana usage") , which abolished the kana for wi (ゐ・ヰ), we (ゑ・ヱ), and wo (を ...
The number 9 is also considered unlucky; when pronounced ku, it is a homophone for suffering (苦). The number 13 is sometimes considered unlucky, though this is a carryover from Western tradition. In contrast, 7 and sometimes 8 are considered lucky in Japanese. [2] In modern Japanese, cardinal numbers except 4 and 7 are generally given the on ...
Words whose kanji are jukujikun are often usually written as hiragana (if native), or katakana (if borrowed); some old borrowed words are also written as hiragana, especially Portuguese loanwords such as かるた (karuta) from Portuguese "carta" (English “card”) or てんぷら (tempura) from Portuguese "tempora" (English “times, season ...
In English, spaces are used for interword separation as well as separation between punctuation and words. In normal Japanese writing, no spaces are left between words, except if the writing is exclusively in hiragana or katakana (or with very little kanji), in which case spaces may be required to avoid confusion.
For example, the Japanese word for "to do" (する suru) is written with two hiragana: す (su) + る (ru). Katakana are generally used to write loanwords, foreign names and onomatopoeia. For example, retasu was borrowed from the English "lettuce", and is written with three katakana: レ (re) + タ (ta) + ス (su).