New answers tagged katakana
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What is mostly used on signs in Tokyo: Katakana, Hiragana or Kanji?
Just back from a week in Japan, so thought I'd chime in.
Short answer:
Learn Katakana.
Long answer:
The base of the Japanese written language is Kanji. These originally Chinese characters are used to ...
1
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Why does Japanese not have a native "tu" sound?
I have extended @Eirikr's comment as an answer.
The change of "tu" to "tsu" can be attributed to stop/affricate system which refers to the tripartite contrast of alveolar stop [t], ...
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14
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Accepted
Why does Japanese not have a native "tu" sound?
Simple answer is /tu/ turned into /tsu/ the same way /ti/ turned into /tʃi/ ('ti' turned into 'chi', basically). Phonemes are what we call phonetic units of meaningful distinction in languages, but ...
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