#laura learns

learning the basics 📚

(yet again)

Disclaimer: I haven't been posting a lot lately (life's been hectic) so I decided to start sharing some of my notes. These were taken a while back, based on Tae Kim's grammar guide.

Japanese consists of two phonetic scripts (Hiragana and Katakana, referred to as kana), with a little less than 50 characters each. Today we'll study Hiragana!

Hiragana (ひらがな) is used for a couple of reasons:

• Grammatical purposes;

• Words with really difficult/rare Kanji;

• Colloquial expressions;

• Onomatopoeias;

• Or by beginner students and children, in place of unfamiliar Kanji;

Every character in Hiragana corresponds to a [vowel] or [consonant + vowel] syllable sound, with the exception of [ん].

When practicing by hand, it's extremely important to remember that stroke order and the direction of strokes matter a lot! You don’t want to end up with the writing skills of a clumsy toddler.

(the chart bellow has hiragana and katakana btw, the hiragana characters are on the left side)

source: r/japaneseresources on reddit

Thought learning all the characters was hard enough? Fear not, there's additional sounds for you to learn.

📚 The Muddied Sounds 📚

There are five more consonant sounds that are written by affixing two tiny lines (dakuten) or a tiny circle (handakuten) to a character. This creates a less clipped version of the consonants, as you can see bellow:

source: japanistry.com

📚 The Small [や], [ゆ] and [よ] 📚

We can combine a consonant with a / ya / yu / yo sound by attaching a small [や], [ゆ] or [よ] to the /i/ vowel character of each consonant.

source: guidetojapanese.org

📚 The Small [つ] 📚

A small [つ] is inserted between characters to carry the consonant sound of the second character to the end of the first.

Note that when you encounter a small [つ] between characters, there's almost always a clipping sound to the pronounciation! You gotta make sure to clip the right consonant (the consonant of the second character).

Example: ざっし (zas-shi / magazine)

📚 The Long Vowel Sound 📚

You can extend the vowel sound of a character by adding [あ], [い] or [う] to them. See the chart bellow:

source: guidetojapanese.org

Example: to create a extended vowel sound from [か], we add a [あ] to create [かあ].

Remember to actually hold your vowels long enough, or you'll end up saying stuff like [ここ - here] instead of [こうこう - highschool].

Lastly, there are a few exceptions where and /e/ vowel is extended by adding [え] or and /o/ vowel is extended by adding [お], but those are few and far between, so pay attention but don't worry too much about it.

Example: おねえさん (older sister)

currently memorizing german sounds + ひらがな 📚✨️

a chill day in a brazilian university 📚✨️

taking notes on pronunciation while my cat (Dandara) judges me from up above 📝✨️

i might make some flashcards later bc boy oh boy there's a LOT of rules

good morning :)