The Japanese language is a phonetic language written in Hiragana. To understand Hiragana, I’ve prepared a smol introduction for you:
Hiragana is a complex, symbol-based syllable writing form used for the Japanese language derived from kana. Each mora (similar to a syllable based on phonetics) is represented by a singular character or digraph.
There are 5 vowels, being:
| English | Hiragana |
|---|---|
| a | あ |
| i | い |
| u | う |
| e | え |
| o | お |
And 42 consonant-vowel unions:
- へ Being pronounced é when used as a particle
- を Being used as a particle & in some names. It is often pronounced o instead.
- ん Used as a singular consonant, used for n and mu.
While other systems usually use a character known as chōonpu, aka. the long vowel mark, it’s rarely used in Hiragana, unless when written in the Okinawan dialect, and in the word らーめん, rumen. But this is seen as non-standard, mainly since most Tokyo residents look down on Okinawans.
/jk
We heavily recommend taking a look at the hiragana chart to gain a full overview of the available character set within Hiragana, and how to form & construct words & sentences.
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