Pronunciation Practice

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Class Session 2a Chapter 1

• Pronunciation Practice
• The Japanese Written Language (Information Only)
• The Japanese Writing System
• Basic Hiragana
• Particles (wa, o, e)
• The Diacritics (plosive) and " (voicing)
• Long Vowels
• Double Consonants (a, ii, u, e, o)
• Palatalized Sounds (kya, myo, ryu)
• Katakana
• Kanji
• Punctuation and Format

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Pronunciation Practice Unvoiced Sounds
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Pronunciation Practice Voiced Sounds
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Pronunciation Practice Palatalized Sounds
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The Japanese Writing System
Japanese writing consists of three different
systems kanji, hiragana, and katakana Kanji (l
iterally, Han Chinese characters) logographic
characters Hiragana A syllabic writing
system Katakana A syllabic writing system All
three systems are routinely used in writing
Japanese ??????????????? (kanji, hiragana,
katakana)
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Kanji Characters ??

• Japanese was originally not a written language
• Kanji were introduced from China through Korea
  around the 5th Century AD by Korean scribes who
  could write Chinese
• In order to write Japanese, one had to learn (a
  form of) Chinese writing was limited to the
  educated elite
• Over time, kanji were adapted to more directly
  represent the Japanese language
• Japanese and Chinese are linguistically unrelated
  languages
• Using Chinese characters to represent Japanese
  was a long and difficult process
• Today, written Chinese and written Japanese are
  two different systems, although they use some of
  the same characters
• Language reforms in 1947, 1972, and 1981 resulted
  in a list of 2,135 common use chararacters
  (????, joyo kanji)
• Many more characters must be learned to read
  older material
• Kanji characters are used to represent concrete
  meanings conveyed by nouns, verbs, adjectives and
  adverbs

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Kanji

• Kanji characters were developed in China
  4000-5000 years ago
• Each kanji represents meaning rather than sound
• Many kanji have both a Chinese and a Japanese
  pronunciation
• Most of the simple kanji were created from
  pictures
• More complicated kanji were created by combining
  two or more simple kanji into a single character

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Example Kanji Characters
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Hiragana ???

• Created from cursive forms of kanji characters
  used phonetically to represent Japanese sounds
  during the Heian Period (794-1192)
• Each symbol represents a syllable sound rather
  than a meaning (a syllabary)
• Used to represent grammatical items (verb endings
  and particles) and words that are not written in
  kanji or katakana
• Here is a sample sentence written normally, then
  in only hiragana
• ???????????????
• ????????????????????
• There are 46 basic hiragana characters, two
  diacritics and a few conventions (discussed
  shortly)
• You can write anything in Japanese using hiragana

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Katakana ???

• Katakana are the angular-shaped syllabic
  characters derived from parts of kanji characters
  (kata means side)
• The katakana syllabary was derived from
  abbreviated Chinese characters used by Buddhist
  monks to indicate the correct pronunciations of
  Chinese texts in the 9th century.
• Also consists of 46 basic characters, two
  diacritics, and some different conventions than
  are used with hiragana
• Used for foreign words, words that mimic sounds,
  scientific names of plants and animals, and to
  put emphasis on words
• Some new conventions have been developed to
  better represent foreign sounds

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Basic Hiragana
Unvoiced Sounds
? A ? I ? U ? E ? O
? KA ? KI ? KU ? KE ? KO
? SA ? SHI ? SU ? SE ? SO
? TA ? CHI ? TSU ? TE ? TO
? NA ? NI ? NU ? NE ? NO
? HA ? HI ? FU ? HE ? HO
? MA ? MI ? MU ? ME ? MO
? YA - ? YU - ? YO
? RA ? RI ? RU ? RE ? RO
? WA ? (W)I - ? (W)E ? WO
? N
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Particles (wa, o, e)

Convention used in the syllabaries (hiragana and
katakana) include the use of the following
symbols for particles ha (? and ?) is used for
the particle wa (w)o (?and ?)is used for the
particle o he (? and ?) is used for the particle
e
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The Diacritics " (voicing) and (plosive)
Two diacritic marks are added to the right,
upper corner of some of the basic kana
characters to represent sounds added to Japanese
speech The voicing marker ? changes the initial
voiceless consonant of the syllable to its voiced
counterpart. For example ka ? becomes
? ga ke ? becomes ge ? ki ? becomes ?
gi ko ? becomes go ? ku ? becomes ?
gu The plosive mark is added to ha, hi, fu, he
or ho to convert them to syllables with The
consonant p ha ? becomes pa ? he ?
becomes pe ? hi ? becomes pi ? ho ?
becomes po ? fu ? becomes pu ?
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Hiragana Long Vowels
Two hiragana characters are used to represent
long vowels Putting a ?after ka ?
represents ka ?? Putting u ? after o ?
represents o (sometimes romanized as ou or
oo) Putting i ? after e ? usually represents
e (?? may also be used) A long i sound is
usually represented by ii (rather than i )
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Double Consonants
Double consonants are represented by a small tsu
? (hiragana) or ? (katakana) Kitte (stamp)
and kekkon (marriage) include a double consonant
and are written in hiragana as ???
???? The tsu is not pronounced but represents
the brief pause (a glottal stop) before the next
consonant
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Palatalized Sounds (kya, myo, ryu)
Palatized sounds (such as kya, kyu, kyo ) are
represented by the kana character that represents
the initial consonant plus the vowel i and a
small-sized character ya, yu, or yo (hiragana ?
? ? and katakana ? ? ?) hiragana katakana
kyo (today) is written as ??? (???) kaisha
(company) is written as ???? (???? )
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Punctuation and Format

• Japanese is written vertically, top-to-bottom and
  right-to-left
• Japanese is also written horizontally,
  left-to-right
• No spaces are used between words
• Common punctuation marks include
• ? period
•  
• ?comma
•  
• ? ? quotation marks
•  
• No question mark is needed (but ? is sometimes
  used)
•  
• Except for the period, there are no strict rules
  on using punctuation