Japanese Lingual Terms

Many unique Japanese grammatical features are fequently reffered to by their Japanese name. Here is a list the some of the more common of these terms.

Hiragana - The cursive "alphabet" or syllabry. Used to write traditional Japanese words

Katakana - The square "alphabet" or syllabry. Used to write foreign names and import words and used to emphasise words like italics in English.

Kana - Collective name for both hiragana and katakana.

Kanji - Phonetic Chinese characters. Used in unison with hiragana and katakana to create the written Japanese language.

Romaaji - Roman letters. The Japanese use our alphabet sometimes for abbriviations. Japanese writting can also be converted into Roman letters for beginers of Japanese.

Dakuten - Two small marks added to the upper-right corner of some kana to modify the sound. For example, the kana for "ka" with dakuten changes the sound to "ga."

Han-dakuten - A small circle added to the upper-right hand corner of kana in the "h" row. Changes the sound from "h" to "p."

Soku-on - Double consonant sounds created by a small "tsu" plus a kana begining in a consonant (not all consonants possible).

You-on - Diphthong sounds created by a kana ending in "-i" plus a small "ya" "yu" or "yo." Furigana - Also known as rubi. Furigana are small kana added above kanji to show how to pronounce the character. Often added to kanji in manga. This makes it possible to read the character even if you've never seen it.

Okurigana - Kana characters that "hang" off the end of a kanji. Many kanji readings (especially verbs and adjectives) have okurigana endings so you can conjugate them. For example, the character (white) has the reading "shiro(i)." The "i" in parenthesis tells you that you write a hiragana "i" after the character to make that word. So "shiro(i)" is written

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