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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.
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.
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 ).
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.
Kungana (訓仮名, translation kana): magana for transcribing Japanese words, using Japanese translations ascribed to kanji (native "readings" or kun'yomi). For example, Yamato (大和) would be spelt as 八間跡, with three magana with kun'yomi for ya, ma and to; likewise, natsukashi (懐かし, evoking nostalgia) spelt as 夏樫 for natsu ...
Historical kana usage can be used to look up words in larger dictionaries and dictionaries specializing in old vocabulary, which are in print in Japan. Because of the great discrepancy between the pronunciation and spelling and the widespread adoption of modern kana usage, historical kana usage is almost never seen, except in a few special cases.
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 Edo period and the Meiji period, some Japanese linguists tried to separate kana e and kana ye again. The shapes of characters differed with each linguist. 𛀁 and 𛄡 were just two of many shapes. They were phonetic symbols to fill in the blanks of gojuon table. Japanese people didn't separate them in normal writing.