日本語:Japanese Alphabets, pronouncation, and romanizatio

[IdiotbyDefault]

Explanation of Romanization in Japanese:

In the beginners lessons as well as general lists for vocab and slang, romanized characters will be given along side the traditional Japanese alphabet spelling of words to help out students that haven't quite mastered how to read Japanese characters.

What is romanization?

A: Romanization basically is the taking the sounds of a language and putting those sounds into English alphabet characters. If you have studied Mandarin, it is basically very similar to the role pinyin plays in pronouncing words. Except that this for Japanese.

The romanization that we will be using is based off of the Hepbern system of romanization.

What is the Hepburn system?

A: Herpburn was a priest in the 19th century that came up for a way for non-native learners of Japanese to be able to pronounce the sounds of characters in Japanese. The Hepburn system of romanization best matches the sounds that are found in Japanese for native English speakers.

For more info:
Romanization of Japanese
Hepburn Romanziation System  

[IdiotbyDefault]

Pronunciation Guide of Japanese

This is an explanation of pronouncing sounds in Japanese.

The base vowels in Japanese are the same as English:
A
E
I
O
U

However, the order and pronunciation are different:

A is pronounced like the a in August.
I is pronounced like the e in East.
U is pronounced like the u in Tube.
E is pronounced like the first e in Edge.
O is pronounced like either o in Ohio.

Both native alphabet systems of Japanese organize the alphabet according to the order of the vowels followed by characters that combine consonants with the 5 vowels.

Possible consonants in Japanese include k,s,t,n,h,m,y,r,w, along with g,z,j,d,b, and p. There are two special characters but we will get to them when it is time. Sometimes a special combination of two consonants will appear, but we will get to them in time.

To make a sound, you combine first a consonant with a vowel to make a sound in Japanese.

For example, let's break down the combinations of the English borrowed word Samurai.

S -> a = Sa, M-> u = Mu, R - > a = Ra, and i by itself. This makes Samurai.  

[IdiotbyDefault]

Pronunciation Guide Part 2:Two Consonants Together

Now we will explain a bit more with pronunciation for words and pronunciation with other characters found in Japanese.

How do you pronounce a word in Japanese?

A: Remember that in first part of the pronunciation guide I said that each character (sound) in Japanese was one syllable? This is how you can go about pronouncing words in Japanese.

Example: Another English borrowed word from Japanese, Tsunami. In English the word seems to have two syllables, but in Japanese it has three "Tsu-na-mi".

But wait, what is two consonants doing in Tsunami (the ts of tsu)? In Japanese, there are some characters that have two consonants instead of one before the vowels.

These two consonant combinations include:
ky, sh, ch, ny, hy, my, ry, gy, by, py, and jy*.

*In Hepburn Romanization (which is used in this guide), jy is actually just treated as one consonant, j.

Even though the character systems themselves haven't been introduced by this point in the overall guide, I will try to explain the best I can until we get to that point.

To make the the two consonant character in Japanese, you first take the main i-line character from the first consonant sound.

For example, for the sound my you would first need mi. For hy, you would need hi.

After that, you would add a second character from the ya line (ya, yu, or yo) and write it smaller than the first character.

Example: Mya requires mi and then a smaller ya next to it. Hyo requires hi and then a smaller yo next to it.

To make the sound, you would then drop the i afterwards.

Mi + smaller ya - i = Mya; Hi + smaller yo - i = Hyo.

Tsu and shi are the only two characters that don't follow this pattern and have their own characters representing their sound.

An important thing to remember is that even though you are combining two characters together to make an overall sound, they still have only one syllable in Japanese.  

[IdiotbyDefault]

Pronunciation Guide Part 3:The other two special characters

In the first part of the guide, I said there were two other characters that were somewhat special because of their usage in Japanese. One is used only grammatically and the other is used like a normal character in a word.

These are o and n. They are also the only characters (besides the main vowels themselves) that do not combine with other vowels to make a sound. They sit by themselves in most charts, alone.

O is the one that used only grammatically. To type the character on the computer however, it is written as "wo". For now on, to distinguish this character from the vowel o, we will call it wo.

Wo's function in a Japanese sentence is to mark the direct object. The direct object is the noun in the sentence that is being acted upon. Still too confusing? Let's try a sentence in English.

Timmy read the newspaper.

Now, if you were taught well in school, you know that if you wanted to find the direct object you would have to ask yourself a question such as "Timmy read what?" in this sentence. The direct object is newspaper. Wo points out the direct object all the time and you won't have to ask yourself silly, obvious questions.

N is used much just like a regular vowel. Except that it NEVER combines with another consonant to make a sound.

Example: Shinsetsu (nice, kind) n is used by itself as Shi and se and tsu all have their place. Occasionally, when certain sounds are used after the n in a word, it changes not only the romanization, but the pronunciation too. We will get to that at a later point.