Japanese hiragana: Lesson 1

Japanese Hiragana

Hiragana syllables developed from Chinese characters, as shown below. Hiragana were originally called onnade or 'women's hand' as were used mainly by women - men wrote in kanji and katakana. By the 10th century, hiragana were used by everybody. The word hiragana means "oridinary syllabic script".

In early versions of hiragana there were often many different characters to represent the same syllable, however the system was eventually simplified so that there was a one-to-one relationship between spoken and written syllables. The present orthography of hiragana was codified by the Japanese government in 1946.

Japanese kanji: Lessson 3

Japanese Kanji

Between 5,000 and 10,000 Chinese characters, or kanji, are used in written Japanese. In 1981 in an effort to make it easier to read and write Japanese, the Japanese government introduced the jōyō kanji hyō (List of Chinese Characters for General Use), which includes 1,945 regular characters, plus 166 special characters used only for people's names. Government documents, newspapers, textbooks and other publications for non-specialists use only these kanji. Writers of other material are free to use whichever kanji they want.

Japanese children are expected to know all of the jōyō kanji by the end of high school but to read specialist publications and ordinary literature, they need to know another two or three thousand kanji.

The word kanji is the Japanese version of the Chinese word hànzì, which means "Han characters". Han refers to the Han Dynasty (206BC - 220AD) and is the name used by the Chinese for themselves.

When the Japanese adopted Chinese characters to write the Japanese language they also borrowed many Chinese words. Today about half the vocabulary of Japanese comes from Chinese and Japanese kanji are use to represent both Sino-Japanese words and native Japanese words with the same meaning.

For example, the native Japanese word for water is mizu while the Sino-Japanese word issui. Both are written with the same character. The former is known as the kun yomi(Japanese reading) of the character while the latter is known as the on yomi (Chinese reading) of the character.

Japanese counting: Lesson 1

In Japanese writing or caligraphy they use numbers like the english form。The list is contaning the Japanese numbers。

SYLLABICATION (Japanese) English Form Japanese Character。

                Ichi                                     1                               一

                Ni                                       2                          　 二

                San                                     3                               三

                Yon                                     4                               四

                Go 　                                 5　                           五

                Roku                                  6                                六

　            Nana                                  7                                七

　            Hachi                                 8                                八

                Kyuu                                  9                                 九

                Ju                                      10                               十

                Zero(zeh-roh)                    0                               ゼロ

っけ？

Pronunciation

ke?

Meaning / Usage

Use it for a question. This may imply that you kind of knew it before, but you don't remember it now.

Examples

お前、寿司好きだっけ？
おまえ、すしすきだっけ？
Do you like sushi?

ディズニーランドって香港にもありましたっけ？
ディズニーランドってほんこんにもありましたっけ？
Is there a Disneyland in Hong Kong?

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だな

Pronunciation

dana

Meaning / Usage

noun + だな。
Use this when you want to express your opinion. (It may sound like talking to yourself)

Examples

あの営業の人、めちゃめちゃ美人だな。
あのえいぎょうのひと、めちゃめちゃびじんだな。
That saleswoman is very beautiful.

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