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Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese is a textbook for learners of the Japanese language that starts at an absolute beginner level. [9] [10] The textbook is divided into two volumes, containing 23 lessons focusing on Japanese grammar, vocabulary, and kanji. [11]
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.
Remembering the Kana: A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 hours each [8] is a book by James Heisig for remembering hiragana and katakana. It uses mostly the same imaginative memory technique as Remembering the Kanji I, though some katakana are prompted to be learned as simplified forms of their hiragana counterparts.
Hiragana and katakana were first simplified from kanji, and hiragana, emerging somewhere around the 9th century, [50] was mainly used by women. Hiragana was seen as an informal language, whereas katakana and kanji were considered more formal and were typically used by men and in official settings.
The second book, "Jimi's Book of Japanese: A Motivating Method to Learn Japanese (Katakana) teaches readers 46 Katakana syllabary plus essential Japanese vocabulary (ISBN 0972324720, ISBN 978-0972324724). Both books contain interactive exercises to improve basic Japanese comprehension.
In each entry, the top entry is the hiragana, the second entry is the corresponding katakana, the third entry is the Hepburn romanization of the kana, and the fourth entry is the pronunciation written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Please see Japanese phonology for more details on the individual sounds.
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.
For example, the hiragana る (ru) is derived from the man'yōgana 留, whereas the katakana ル (ru) is derived from the man'yōgana 流. The multiple alternative hiragana forms for a single syllable were ultimately standardized in 1900, and the rejected variants are now known as hentaigana.