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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.
The list is sorted by Japanese reading (on'yomi in katakana, then kun'yomi in hiragana), in accordance with the ordering in the official Jōyō table. This list does not include characters that were present in older versions of the list but have since been removed ( 勺 , 銑 , 脹 , 錘 , 匁 ).
Used to separate foreign words and items in lists. For example, if ビルゲイツ ("BillGates") is written instead of ビル・ゲイツ ("Bill Gates") , a Japanese speaker unfamiliar with the name might have difficulty working out where the boundary between the given name and surname lies.
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). Katakana are generally used to write loanwords, foreign names and onomatopoeia.
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]
In the 10th century, e and ye progressively merged into ye, and then during the Edo period the pronunciation changed from /je/ to /e/. However, during the Meiji period, linguists almost unanimously agreed on the kana for yi, ye, and wu. 𛀆 and 𛄢 are thought to have never occurred as morae in Japanese, and 𛀁 was merged with え and エ.
The table is developed and maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT). Although the list is designed for Japanese students, it can also be used as a sequence of learning characters by non-native speakers as a means of focusing on the most commonly used kanji. Kyōiku kanji are a subset (1,026) of the 2,136 characters of jōyō ...