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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.
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.
Gairaigo are Japanese words originating from, or based on, foreign-language, generally Western, terms.These include wasei-eigo (Japanese pseudo-anglicisms).Many of these loanwords derive from Portuguese, due to Portugal's early role in Japanese-Western interaction; Dutch, due to the Netherlands' relationship with Japan amidst the isolationist policy of sakoku during the Edo period; and from ...
Japanese vowels are sometimes phonetically voiceless. There is no phonemic contrast between voiced and voiceless versions of a vowel, but the use of voiceless vowels is often described as an obligatory feature of standard Tokyo Japanese, in that it sounds unnatural to use a voiced vowel in positions where devoicing is usual. [209]
In addition to native words and placenames, kanji are used to write Japanese family names and most Japanese given names. Centuries ago, hiragana and katakana, the two kana syllabaries, derived their shapes from particular kanji pronounced in the same way. However, unlike kanji, kana have no meaning, and are used only to represent sounds.
In some names, Japanese characters phonetically "spell" a name and have no intended meaning behind them. Many Japanese personal names use puns. [16] Although usually written in kanji, Japanese names have distinct differences from Chinese names through the selection of characters in a name and the pronunciation of them. A Japanese person can ...
Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana. [7] Homo sapiens, as a species, is written ヒト (hito), rather than its kanji 人. Katakana are often (but not always) used for transcription of Japanese company names.
With a few exceptions, such as for the three particles は (pronounced instead of ), へ (pronounced instead of ) and (written を instead of お), Japanese when written in kana is phonemically orthographic, i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between kana characters and sounds, leaving only words' pitch accent unrepresented.