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Day 3
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Minasan Konnichiwa!

Today, Id like to talk about introduction of Japanese characters: Hiragana,
Katakana and Kanji.

Have you watched todays video, Features of Japanese Language already?
If you havent seen it, please watch it first. To watch the video, please click
below link.
http://learnjapanese123.com/7daysFreeCourse/Day3/Day3FreeLessonVideo.
mov

Here is an example Japanese sentence:



Watashi wa koohii o nomimasu.


As you see above, there are three types of writing forms in Japanese:
Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. The former two are original Japanese
writing and the latter derived from China.

Hiragana Japanese is a syllable-timed language while English is
stress-timed. That means, you can understand how to read any Japanese
words once you know how to pronounce each Hiragana character and some
pronunciation rules. (on the other hand for English, you need to know the
spelling as well as the pronunciation. We never know how to pronounce an
English word such as photo by just knowing how to read alphabet: a,b,c).
Japanese pronunciation rule is very systematic, thus, once you know it, its
much easier for you to study Japanese further up to the upper level.

Each Japanese syllable is made up of either a single vowel: /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/ and
/o/ or a combination of a consonant plus a vowel. The only exception is the /n/,
Katakana
Kanji

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/m/ or // sound which is represented by the character .
There are 46 basic Hiragana, 25 voiced or semi-voiced variations (called
Daku-on) and 33 contracted sounds.

Katakana Basically, Katakana and Hiragana charts are correspondent
each other. There are 46 basic Katakana, 25 Daku-on, 33 contracted sounds
and some special combinations of Katakana to describe foreign words. For
example: TV (terebi) and radio (rajio). In casual writing, Katakana is used
when the meaning is emphasized (youll see many Katakana in comics). Also
katakana is used for a variety of onomatopoeia sounds and emotional
word in Japanese. (e.g. doki-doki to represent a fast heart beat)

Kanji is an ideogram, which means, each kanji has meaning in it. Even
though the pronunciation is quite different from Chinese, Japanese and
Chinese can make basic simple communication through writing because we
share the meaning of each Kanji.
Japanese Kanji uses so-called traditional Chinese characters, which are used
in Taiwan, and there are 1945 commonly used Kanji in Japan.

Hiragana and Katakana were developed around 1000A.D.
How were the Hiragana and Katakana developed?

As you see below pictures, Hiragana was developed using a whole picture of
Kanji, whereas Katakana was developed using a part of kanji.











Hiragana is very curvy and Katakana is mu ore square-like letters.

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Hiragana and Katakana charts


Basic 46 Hiragana Basic 46 Katakana

























If youre interested in learning Japanese letters (Hiragana and Katakana),
here is my recommendation.
http://learnjapanese123.com/HiraganaKatakana/