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The Japanese Alphabet.

The Japanese alphabet is usually referred to as kana, specifically hiragana and katakana. While the Hiragana consists of 48 syllables,it is a phonetic alphabet where each alphabetic combination represents just a single sound. Thus any Japanese word can be written ina way that can be read without having to remember how the word is pronounced. So the Japanese kana are much simpler, the way

something is written is the way it sounds. There is also Kanji, a Japanese system of writing based on borrowed or slightly modifiedChinese characters.

Hiragana Syllables

The table below shows the 48 Hiragana syllables:

a ka sa ta na ha ma ya ra wa n i ki shi chi ni hi mi ri wi u ku su tsu nu fu mu yu ru e ke se te ne he me re we o ko so to no ho mo yo ro wo

Maybe you have noticed that many sounds are missing, thats why Japanese added some additional sounds using diacritics orcombinations of syllables, the table below shows the additional sounds in

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Hiragana:

ga za da ba pa gi ji ji bi pi gu zu zu bu pu ge ze de be pe go zo do bo po kya sha cha hya pya rya kyu shu chu hyu pyu ryu kyo sho cho hyo pyo ryo gya ja nya bya mya (ja) gya ju nyu byu my (ju) gyo jo nyo byo myo (jo)

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Katakana Syllables

Katakana are most often used for transcription of words in foreign languages, used to represent sounds, technical and scientific terms.Katakanas main feature is short straight strokes and angular corners, thats why Katakana is considered the simplest of theJapanese

scripts.

a ka sa ta na ha ma ya ra wa n i ki shi chi ni hi mi ri (wi) u ku su tsu nu fu mu yu ru e ke se te ne he me re (we) o ko so to no ho mo yo ro (w)o

ga za da ba pa gi ji ji bi pi gu zu zu bu pu ge ze de be pe go zo do bo po kya sha cha hya pya rya kyu shu chu hyu pyu ryu kyo sho cho hyo pyo ryo

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gya ja nya bya mya (ja) gya ju nyu byu my (ju) gyo jo nyo byo myo (jo)

For a modern Katakana there was a necessity to add some sounds, below is a list of additions to the katakana, used mainly torepresent sounds from other languages:

ye va () va she ti tsa fa wi vi () vi je tu tsi fi we vu ve che tyu tse fe wo ve () vo di tso fo

vo () vya du fyu vyu dyu vyo

Kanji Characters

Kanji are used together with three other systems to write modern Japanese, Kanji which is a Japanese system of writing based onborrowed or slightly modified Chinese characters is used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems and verb stems.

For Kanji characters refers to the Chinese characters.