Hot answers tagged kana
9
Does anyone know what might be the correct kana for this name?
It is your name, so you are entitled to choose the correct kana.
However, there is historical precedent for ジョアン. There is a famous Portuguese missionary João Rodrigues who came to Japan in the late 16th century. He left several important books including "Arte da Lingoa de Iapam" (日本大文典) ...
7
Japanese only allows gemination and nasal as the coda of a syllable. The two kanas っ and ん correspond to them, and are the kanas without a vowel. Also, when a kana is followed by a glide such as in ゃ, ゅ, or ょ, it loses the vowel. For example, In きゃ, き only represents k, not ki.
In general, languages disfavor coda, and nasal is among the sounds that can ...
6
Short answer: no.
For details, read on.
There aren't any rules (as far as I know, anyway). Generally the insertion of spaces in texts written purely in hiragana serves only to improve readability. The writer can take liberties in doing this. Some common patterns do arise, though.
First, you generally tend to break things up word by word, so each ...
6
When writing on a grid, they go in the upper right hand corner of the square below. Similarly, full-stops and commas (。、) also go in the upper right hand corner.
At school, all Japanese first learn on such a grid. In normal handwriting, the distances become closer than on the grid, of course.
(Also, 振り仮名 and Japanese "italicizing" (indicated by dots) go ...
6
As you pointed out, there is no single correct pronunciation of Classical Japanese. It would be more accurate to teach different pronunciations used in different periods, but it would be probably too complicated to teach at schools. The pronunciation of Classical Japanese taught at high schools is the newest one used in Meiji period and later. (I do not ...
5
This is a difference between historical kana use (歴史的仮名遣) and modern kana use (現代仮名遣い).
The kana orthography has been changed over time to reflect newer pronunciations. In this case, the title is written using an older spelling. Take a look at this official cabinet announcement (from 1986) and scroll down to the bottom half. It contains a rather large ...
4
へうげもの is old kana usage (see for example here for some tables of current/old spelling). According to the wikipedia article on this manga, the reading for へうげもの is ひょうげもの, so it is being romanised as it would be pronounced.
4
It appears that one more-formal way to describe characters like 「っ」 is to use the phrase 「小書{こが}き」文字{もじ} or simply「小書{こが}き」。 So, in the case of 「っ」, it would be something like: 小書{こが}きの「つ」.
But in an informal context, something like「小さい『つ』」would probably get the point across.
For more information, there is a more detailed writeup by a user named ...
4
This wiki page gives same law regulations about how to name a company. To give a simple summarize: a company is free to name its company. However, the name of an entity which is not a company cannot make its name look like a company; the name a company must include one of "株式会社", "合名会社", "合資会社", "合同会社" to the kind of the company. Currently, Kanji, Kana, ...
3
I think Sawa nailed it, I just want to add a few things that I think are interesting. There is apparently controversy in the syllable-based model of Japanese prosody. This paper Questioning the universality of the syllable : evidence from Japanese* (Labrune, 2012) where, just taking from the abstract:
whereas the mora and the foot are indisputably present ...
3
I'd recommend you, just like some other contributors have said before, to stick to a simple and easy remembering combination, such as イオアウ or ジョアウ.
Those combinations resemble its real portuguese pronunciation and will give you less troubles when typing it, and registering everywhere.
Greetings from Colombia.
3
Like the Poster "Dono" said, you can choose your own characters when you come to live in Japan and register as a temporary citizen. But, you need to be consistent in everything you register. If you register for one thing with a certain kana style, like a bank account, and then change your mind later and register for a credit card account with a different ...
2
re: カ (katakana) and 力 (kanji)
Well, I can normally distinguish them quite well. Now, that is. When you draw an imaginary basic bottom line to the kana per line, the chikara kanji normally looks a bit as if it is too far below, by fractions of an inch; whilst the katakana ka does not cross that line by any means.
Hmm, do I have some back up? Yes I do. I had ...
2
Here's what my Japanese lecturer told me when I asked her about it:
"Usually it is じ for ji sound. However, when ji is used after chi sound in one word with one kanji, ぢ is used, such as, ちぢむ （縮む）、ちぢれる（縮れる）. When it is a part of word with two kanji, such as, ちじん （知人 = acquaintance), じ is used."
Interesting....
1
In IPA this phenomenon is captured by the little circle under the u, i.e. [u͍̥] which indicates voicelessness.
When pronounced (almost) silent, what's left of the vowel in す and つ kana sounds pretty close to [ɨ], which makes sense, since neither [ɨ] nor [u͍̥] are rounded.
Pronouncing /u/ almost silent is not always possible, however. E.g. compare する and ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
