Despite what many are led to believe, learning Japanese is not significantly more difficult than learning any other language. The truth is mastering any foreign language is quite an endeavor. If you think about it, you are essentially taking everything you’ve learned in life and re-learning it in a completely different way. Obviously, no single book can really claim to teach you everything about a language including all the vocabulary a fluent adult commonly obtains during her life. So what do I mean by a complete guide to Japanese?
Most Japanese textbooks only go over a small subset of what you need to learn Japanese, typically covering a certain amount of grammar and vocabulary with a smattering of dialogues and readings. However, mastering a language requires much more than just learning grammar and vocabulary. What most Japanese textbooks fail to recognize is that they can’t possibly hope to cover all the necessary vocabulary and kanji (Chinese characters) to obtain full fluency. This guide fully recognizes that it cannot teach you everything word by word and character by character. Instead, it will give you a solid understanding of the fundamentals with a wide collection of dialogues and examples. In addition, it will go over various techniques and tools to enable you to teach yourself. Essentially, this book is a guide on how you can learn Japanese to complete fluency by actually using Japanese in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
Another important distinction in the complete guide is that it does not try to hide or avoid more casual but perfectly acceptable aspects of the language. Many textbooks often avoid styles of speech and vocabulary you would normally use regularly with close friends, family, and acquaintances! In this guide, you will be introduced to all aspects of the language based on real-world practicality and usefulness; not on an artificial, filtered version of what others consider to be “proper” Japanese.
Resources and Tools
There are a large number of useful tools on the web for learning Japanese. Not only are there excellent online dictionaries, which are often better than many print dictionaries, there are also great tools and social networking sites for online collaboration and language study.
In order to fully utilize these online resources or if you’re reading this book online, you’ll need to setup your computer to support Japanese.
I’m currently writing this as quickly as possible without a lot of proofreading so there WILL be many typos and mistakes for the first few revisions.
Copyright
The Complete Guide is currently NOT licensed under a creative commons or any other license. I might consider some kind of license when I finish the first draft.
Kanji
To start with, I have listed the kanji you will need for the vocabulary for your convenience. The link will take you to a diagram of the stroke order. I recommend practicing the kanji in the context of real words (such as the ones below).
Here is the list of some simple nouns that might be used in the exercises.
どこ – where
いつ – when
どうして – why
どう – how
どれ – which
ミーティング – meeting
ボールペン – ball-point pen
何【なに】 – what
誰【だれ】 – who
映画【えいが】 – movie
彼【かれ】 – he; boyfriend
彼女【かのじょ】 – she; girlfriend
雨【あめ】 – rain
水【みず】 – water
昨日【きのう】 – yesterday
今日【きょう】 – today
明日【あした】 – tomorrow
知り合い【しりあい】 – acquaintance
鉛筆【えんぴつ】 – pencil
仕事【しごと】 – work
入口【いりぐち】 – entrance
出口【でぐち】 – exit
図書館【としょかん】 – library
Basic Particle Exercise with 「は」
Let’s first get used to the basic concept of particles by making some very simple sentences with them. In this first exercise, we are going to use the topic particle to explain the current topic of conversation. Remember, the topic particle 「は」 is always pronounced as /wa/.
Now we are going to practice getting used to the differences between the 「は」 and 「も」 particles. The sentences are actually pretty lame but this was the only way I could think of to make obvious which particle should be used. Remember, the point is to get a sense of when and when not to use the inclusive particle instead of the topic particle.
Fill in the blank with the correct particle, either 「は」 or 「も」
In this last exercise, we will practice all three particles by identifying which one should be used for different types of situations. Remember that the 「が」 particle is only used when you want to identify something out of many other possibilities. While there are some cases where both 「は」 and 「が」 makes sense grammatically, because they mean different things, the correct one all depends on what you want to say.
Fill in the blank with the correct particle, either 「は」、 「も」、 or 「が」
We want to now make good use of what we learned in the last lesson by associating a noun with another noun. This is done with something called particles. Particles are one or more Hiragana characters that attach to the end of a word to define the grammatical function of that word in the sentence. Using the correct particles is very important because the meaning of a sentence can completely change just by changing the particles. For example, the sentence “Eat fish.” can become “The fish eats.” simply by changing one particle.
The 「は」 topic particle
Vocabulary
学生 【がく・せい】 – student
うん – yes (casual)
明日 【あした】 – tomorrow
ううん – no (casual)
今日 【きょう】 – today
試験 【しけん】 – exam
The first particle we will learn is the topic particle. The topic particle identifies what it is that you’re talking about, essentially the topic of your sentence. Let’s say a person says, “Not student.” This is a perfectly valid sentence in Japanese but it doesn’t tell us much without knowing what the person is talking about. The topic particle will allow us to express what our sentences are about. The topic particle is the character 「は」. Now, while this character is normally pronounced as /ha/, it is pronounced /wa/ only when it is being used as the topic particle.
Example 1
ボブ：アリスは学生？
Bob: Is Alice (you) student?
アリス：うん、学生。
Alice: Yeah, (I) am.
Here, Bob is indicating that his question is about Alice. Notice that once the topic is established, Alice does not have to repeat the topic to answer the question about herself.
Example 2
ボブ：ジョンは明日？
Bob: John is tomorrow?
アリス：ううん、明日じゃない。
Alice: No, not tomorrow.
Since we have no context, we don’t have enough information to make any sense of this conversation. It obviously makes no sense for John to actually be tomorrow. Given a context, as long as the sentence has something to do with John and tomorrow, it can mean anything. For instance, they could be talking about when John is taking an exam.
Example 3
アリス：今日は試験だ。
Alice: Today is exam.
ボブ：ジョンは？
Bob: What about John?
アリス：ジョンは明日。
Alice: John is tomorrow. (As for John, the exam is tomorrow.)
The last example shows how generic the topic of a sentence is. A topic can be referring to any action or object from anywhere even including other sentences. For example, in the last sentence from the previous example, even though the sentence is about when the exam is for John, the word “exam” doesn’t appear anywhere in the sentence!
We’ll see a more specific particle that ties more closely into the sentence at the end of this lesson with the identifier particle.
The 「も」 inclusive topic particle
Vocabulary
学生 【がく・せい】 – student
うん – yes (casual)
でも – but
ううん – no (casual)
Another particle that is very similar to the topic particle is the inclusive topic particle. It is essentially the topic particle with the additional meaning of “also”. Basically, it can introduce another topic in addition to the current topic. The inclusive topic particle is the 「も」 character and its use is best explained by an example.
Example 1
ボブ：アリスは学生？
Bob: Is Alice (you) student?
アリス：うん、トムも学生。
Alice: Yeah, and Tom is also student.
The inclusion of 「も」 must be consistent with the answer. It would not make sense to say, “I am a student, and Tom is also not a student.” Instead, use the 「は」 particle to make a break from the inclusion as seen in the next example.
Example 2
ボブ：アリスは学生？
Bob: Is Alice (you) student?
アリス：うん、でもトムは学生じゃない。
Alice: Yeah, but Tom is not student.
Below is an example of inclusion with the negative.
Example 3
ボブ：アリスは学生？
Bob: Is Alice (you) student?
アリス：ううん、トムも学生じゃない。
Alice: No, and Tom is also not student.
The 「が」 identifier particle
Vocabulary
誰 【だれ】 – who
学生 【がく・せい】 – student
私 【わたし】 – me; myself; I
Ok, so we can make a topic using the 「は」 and 「も」 particle. But what if we don’t know what the topic is? What if I wanted to ask, “Who is the student?” What I need is some kind of identifier because I don’t know who the student is. If I use the topic particle, the question would become, “Is who the student?” and that doesn’t make any sense because “who” is not an actual person.
This is where the 「が」 particle comes into play. It is also referred to as the subject particle but I hate that name since “subject” means something completely different in English grammar. Instead, I call it the identifier particle because the particle indicates that the speaker wants to identify something unspecified.
Example 1
ボブ：誰が学生？
Bob: Who is the one that is student?
アリス：ジョンが学生。
Alice: John is the one who is student.
Bob wants to identify who among all the possible candidates is a student. Alice responds that John is the one. Notice, Alice could also have answered with the topic particle to indicate that, speaking of John, she knows that he is a student (maybe not the student). You can see the difference in the next example.
Example 2
誰が学生？
Who is the one that is student?
学生は誰？
(The) student is who?
The first sentence seeks to identify a specific person for “student” while the second sentence is simply talking about the student. You cannot replace 「が」 with 「は」 in the first sentence because “who” would become the topic and the question would become, “Is who a student?”
The two particles 「は」 and 「が」 may seem very similar only because it is impossible to translate them directly into English. For example, the two sentences below have the same English translation.*
Example 3
私は学生。
I (am) student.
私が学生。
I (am) student.
However, they only seem similar because English cannot express information about the context as succinctly as Japanese sometimes can. In the first sentence, since 「私」 is the topic, the sentence means, “Speaking about me, I am a student”.
However, the second sentence is specifying who the 「学生」 is. If we want to know who the student is, the 「が」 particle tells us it’s 「私」. You can also think about the 「が」 particle as always answering a silent question. The second sentence might be answering a question, “Who is the student?” I often translate the topic particle as “as for; about” and the identifier particle as “the one; the thing” to illustrate the difference.
私は学生。 As for me, (I am) student.
私が学生。
I (am) the one (that is) student.
The 「は」 and 「が」 particles are actually quite different if you think of it the right way. The 「が」 particle identifies a specific property of something while the 「は」 particle is used only to bring up a new topic of conversation. This is why, in longer sentences, it is common to separate the topic with commas to remove ambiguity about which part of the sentence the topic applies to.
*Well technically, it’s the most likely translation given the lack of context.
*Note: The order of topics covered are different in the videos so you may want to read about Adjectives first.
In the following exercises, we will practice the state-of-being conjugations we just covered. But first, you might want to learn or review the following useful nouns that will be used in the exercises.
Kanji
To start with, I have listed the kanji you will need for the vocabulary for your convenience. The link will take you to a diagram of the stroke order. I recommend practicing the kanji in the context of real words (such as the ones below).
Here is the list of some simple nouns that might be used in the exercises.
うん – casual word for “yes” (yeah, uh-huh)
ううん – casual word for “no” (nah, uh-uh)
これ – this
それ – that
あれ – that over there
こう – (things are) this way
そう – (things are) that way
人 【ひと】 – person
大人 【おとな】 – adult
子供 【こども】 – child
友達 【ともだち】 – friend
車 【くるま】 – car
学生 【がくせい】 – student
先生 【せんせい】 – teacher
学校 【がっこう】 – school
小学校 【しょうがっこう】 – elementary school
中学校 【ちゅうがっこう】 – middle school
高校 【こうこう】 – high school
大学 【だいがく】 – college
Conjugation Exercise 1
We are now going to practice the state-of-being conjugations in order. Take each noun and conjugate it to the following forms: the declarative, negative state-of-being, past state-of-being, and negative past state-of-being.
In this second exercise, we are really going to test your conjugation knowledge as well as the vocabulary by translating some simple English sentences.
Please note that while the positive, non-past state-of-being can be implied, for the purpose of this exercise, we will assume it’s always declaratory. Don’t forget that
this creates a very firm and declaratory tone.
In this last exercise, we’ll practice answering very simple questions using the state-of-being. The yes or no answer （うん or ううん） will be given and it is your job to complete the sentence. In deciding whether to use the declaratory 「だ」, I’ve decided to be sexist here and assume all males use the declaratory 「だ」 and all females use the implicit state-of-being (not the case in the real world).
Sample:
Ｑ） 学生？
Ａ） ううん、学生じゃない。
Ｑ１） 友達？
Ａ１） うん、。 (female)
Ｑ１） 友達？
Ａ１） うん、友達。 (female)
Ｑ２） 学校？
Ａ２） ううん、。
Ｑ２） 学校？
Ａ２） ううん、学校じゃない。
Ｑ３） それだった？
Ａ３） ううん、。
Ｑ３） それだった？
Ａ３） ううん、それじゃなかった。
Ｑ４） そう？ (Is that so?)
Ａ４） うん、。 (male)
Ｑ４） そう？ (Is that so?)
Ａ４） うん、そうだ。 (male)
Ｑ５） これ？
Ａ５） ううん、。 (object is away from the speaker)
Ｑ５） これ？
Ａ５） ううん、それじゃない。 (object is away from the speaker)
元気 【げん・き】 – healthy; lively
＊Used as a greeting to indicate whether one is well
One of the trickiest part of Japanese is that there is no verb for the state-of-being like the verb “to be” in English. You can, however, declare what something is by attaching the Hiragana character 「だ」 to a noun or na-adjective only. (We will learn about na-adjectives in the section on adjectives later.)
Declaring that something is so using 「だ」
Attach 「だ」 to the noun or na-adjective
Example: 人＋だ＝人だ
Examples
人だ。
Is person.
学生だ。
Is student.
元気だ。
Is well.
Seems easy enough. Here’s the real kicker though.
A state-of-being can be implied without using 「だ」!
You can say you’re doing well or someone is a student without using 「だ」 at all. For example, below is an example of a very typical greeting among friends. Also notice how the subject isn’t even specified when it’s obvious from the context.
Typical casual greeting
Ａ：元気？
A: (Are you) well?
Ｂ：元気。
B: (I’m) well.
So you may be wondering, “What’s the point of using 「だ」?” Well, the main difference is that a declarative statement makes the sentence sound more emphatic and forceful in order to make it more… well declarative. Therefore, it is more common to hear men use 「だ」 at the end of sentences.
The declarative 「だ」 is also needed in various grammatical structures where a state-of-being must be explicitly declared. There are also times when you cannot attach it. It’s all quite a pain in the butt really but you don’t have to worry about it yet.
Conjugating to the negative state-of-being
Vocabulary
学生 【がく・せい】 – student
友達 【とも・だち】 – friend
元気 【げん・き】 – healthy; lively
＊Used as a greeting to indicate whether one is well
In Japanese, negative and past tense are all expressed by conjugation. We can conjugate a noun or adjective to either its negative or past tense to say that something is not [X] or that something was [X]. This may be a bit hard to grasp at first but none of these state-of-being conjugations make anything declarative like 「だ」 does. We’ll learn how to make these tenses declarative by attaching 「だ」 to the end of the sentence in a later lesson.
First, for the negative, attach 「じゃない」 to the noun or na-adjective.
Conjugation rules for the negative state-of-being
Attach 「じゃない」 to the noun or na-adjective
Example: 学生＋じゃない＝学生じゃない
Examples
学生じゃない。
Is not student.
友達じゃない。
Is not friend.
元気じゃない。
Is not well.
Conjugating to the past state-of-being
Vocabulary
学生 【がく・せい】 – student
友達 【とも・だち】 – friend
元気 【げん・き】 – healthy; lively
＊Used as a greeting to indicate whether one is well
We will now learn the past tense of the state-of-being. To say something was something, attach 「だった」 to the noun or na-adjective.
In order to say the negative past (was not), conjugate the negative to the negative past tense by dropping the 「い」 from 「じゃない」 and adding 「かった」.
Conjugation rules for the past state-of-being
Past state-of-being: Attach 「だった」 to the noun or na-adjective
Example: 友達＋だった ＝友達だった
Negative past state-of-being: Conjugate the noun or na-adjective to the negative first and then replace the 「い」 of 「じゃない」 with 「かった」
Example: 友達じゃない → 友達じゃなかった＝友達じゃなかった
Examples
学生だった。
Was student.
友達じゃなかった。
Was not friend.
元気じゃなかった。
Was not well.
Conjugation summary
We’ve now learned how to express state-of-being in all four tenses. Next we will learn some particles, which will allow us assign roles to words. Here is a summary chart of the conjugations we learned in this section.
Now that we have learned how to write Japanese, we can begin going over the basic grammatical structure of the language. This section primarily covers all the parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. It will also describe how to integrate the various parts of speech into a coherent sentence by using particles. By the end of this section, you should have an understanding of how basic sentences are constructed.
In Japanese, nouns and stems of adjectives and verbs are almost all written in Chinese characters called Kanji. Adverbs are also fairly frequently written in Kanji as well. This means that you will need to learn Chinese characters to be able to read most of the words in the language. (Children’s books or any other material where the audience is not expected to know a lot of Kanji is an exception to this.) Not all words are always written in Kanji however. For example, while the verb “to do” technically has a Kanji associated with it, it is always written in Hiragana.
This guide begins using Kanji from the beginning to help you read “real” Japanese as quickly as possible. Therefore, we will go over some properties of Kanji and discuss some strategies of learning it quickly and efficiently. Mastering Kanji is not easy but it is by no means impossible. The biggest part of the battle is mastering the skills of learning Kanji and time. In short, memorizing Kanji past short-term memory must be done with a great deal of study and, most importantly, for a long time. And by this, I don’t mean studying five hours a day but rather reviewing how to write a Kanji once every several months until you are sure you have it down for good. This is another reason why this guide starts using Kanji right away. There is no reason to dump the huge job of learning Kanji at the advanced level. By studying Kanji along with new vocabulary from the beginning, the immense job of learning Kanji is divided into small manageable chunks and the extra time helps settle learned Kanji into permanent memory. In addition, this will help you learn new vocabulary, which will often have combinations of Kanji you already know. If you start learning Kanji later, this benefit will be wasted or reduced.
Learning Kanji
All the resources you need to begin learning Kanji are on the web for free. You can use dictionaries online such as Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC or jisho.org. They both have great Kanji dictionaries and stroke order diagrams for most Kanji. Especially for those who are just starting to learn, you will want to repeatedly write out each Kanji to memorize the stroke order. Another important skill is learning how to balance the character so that certain parts are not too big or small. So make sure to copy the characters as close to the original as possible. Eventually, you will naturally develop a sense of the stroke order for certain types of characters allowing you to bypass the drilling stage. All the Kanji used in this guide can be easily looked up by copying and pasting to an online dictionary.
Reading Kanji
Almost every character has two different readings called 音読み （おんよみ） and 訓読み（くんよみ）. 音読み is the original Chinese reading while 訓読み is the Japanese reading. Kanji that appear in a compound or 熟語 is usually read with 音読み while one Kanji by itself is usually read with 訓読み. For example, 「力」（ちから） is read with the 訓読み while the same character in a compound word such as 「能力」 is read with the 音読み （which is 「りょく」 in this case）.
Certain characters (especially the most common ones) can have more than one 音読み or 訓読み. For example, in the word 「怪力」, 「力」 is read here as 「りき」 and not 「りょく」. Certain compound words also have special readings that have nothing to do with the readings of the individual characters. These readings must be individually memorized. Thankfully, these readings are few and far in between.
訓読み is also used in adjectives and verbs in addition to the stand-alone characters. These words often have a string of kana (called okurigana) that come attached to the word. This is so that the reading of the Chinese character stays the same even when the word is conjugated to different forms. For example, the past form of the verb 「食べる」 is 「食べた」. Even though the verb has changed, the reading for 「食」 remain untouched. (Imagine how difficult things could get if readings for Kanji changed with conjugation or even worse, if the Kanji itself changed.) Okurigana also serves to distinguish between intransitive and transitive verbs (more on this later).
Another concept that is difficult to grasp at first is that the actual readings of Kanji can change slightly in a compound word to make the word easier to say. The more common transformations include the / h / sounds changing to either / b / or / p / sounds or 「つ」 becoming 「っ」. Examples include: 「一本」、「徹底」、and 「格好」.
Yet another fun aspect of Kanji you’ll run into are words that practically mean the same thing and use the same reading but have different Kanji to make just a slight difference in meaning. For example 「聞く」（きく） means to listen and so does 「聴く」（きく）. The only difference is that 「聴く」 means to pay more attention to what you’re listening to. For example, listening to music almost always prefers 「聴く」 over 「聞く」. 「聞く」 can also mean ‘to ask’, as well as, “to hear” but 「訊く」（きく） can only mean “to ask”. Yet another example is the common practice of writing 「見る」 as 「観る」 when it applies to watching a show such as a movie. Yet another interesting example is 「書く」（かく） which means “to write” while 描く （かく） means “to draw”. However, when you’re depicting an abstract image such as a scene in a book, the reading of the same word 「描く」 becomes 「えがく」. There’s also the case where the meaning and Kanji stays the same but can have multiple readings such as 「今日」 which can be either 「きょう」、「こんじつ」, or 「こんにち」. In this case, it doesn’t really matter which reading you choose except that some are preferred over others in certain situations.
Finally, there is one special character 々 that is really not a character. It simply indicates that the previous character is repeated. For example, 「時時」、「様様」、「色色」、「一一」 can and usually are written as 「時々」、「様々」、「色々」、「一々」.
In addition to these “features” of Kanji, you will see a whole slew of delightful perks and surprises Kanji has for you as you advance in Japanese. You can decide for yourself if that statement is sarcasm or not. However, don’t be scared into thinking that Japanese is incredibly hard. Most of the words in the language usually only have one Kanji associated with it and a majority of Kanji do not have more than two types of readings.
Why Kanji?
Some people may think that the system of using separate, discrete symbols instead of a sensible alphabet is overly complicated. In fact, it might not have been a good idea to adopt Chinese into Japanese since both languages are fundamentally different in many ways. But the purpose of this guide is not to debate how the language should work but to explain why you must learn Kanji in order to learn Japanese. And by this, I mean more than just saying, “That’s how it’s done so get over it!”.
You may wonder why Japanese didn’t switch from Chinese to romaji to do away with having to memorize so many characters. In fact, Korea adopted their own alphabet for Korean to greatly simplify their written language with great success. So why shouldn’t it work for Japanese? I think anyone who has learned Japanese for a while can easily see why it won’t work. At any one time, when you convert typed Hiragana into Kanji, you are presented with almost always at least two choices (two homophones) and sometimes even up to ten. (Try typing “kikan”). The limited number of set sounds in Japanese makes it hard to avoid homophones. Compare this to the Korean alphabet which has 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Any of the consonants can be matched to any of the vowels giving 140 sounds. In addition, a third and sometimes even fourth consonant can be attached to create a single letter. This gives over 1960 sounds that can be created theoretically. (The number of sounds that are actually used is actually much less but it’s still much larger than Japanese.)
Since you want to read at a much faster rate than you talk, you need some visual cues to instantly tell you what each word is. You can use the shape of words in English to blaze through text because most words have different shapes. Try this little exercise: Hi, enve thgouh all teh wrods aer seplled icorrenctly, can you sltil udsternand me?” Korean does this too because it has enough characters to make words with distinct and different shapes. However, because the visual cues are not distinct as Kanji, spaces needed to be added to remove ambiguities. (This presents another problem of when and where to set spaces.)
With Kanji, we don’t have to worry about spaces and much of the problem of homophones is mostly resolved. Without Kanji, even if spaces were to be added, the ambiguities and lack of visual cues would make Japanese text much more difficult to read.
Just for fun, let’s try figuring out the katakana for some English words. I’ve listed some common patterns below but they are only guidelines and may not apply for some words.
As you know, since Japanese sounds almost always consist of consonant-vowel pairs, any English words that deviate from this pattern will cause problems. Here are some trends you may have noticed.
If you’ve seen the move “Lost in Translation”, you know that / l / and / r / are indistinguishable.
（１） Ready -> レディ
（２） Lady -> レディ
If you have more than one vowel in a row or a vowel sound that ends in / r /, it usually becomes a long vowel sound.
（１） Target -> ターゲット
（２） Shoot -> シュート
Abrupt cut-off sounds usually denoted by a / t / or / c / employ the small 「ッ」.
（１） Catch -> キャッチ
（２） Cache -> キャッシュ
Any word that ends in a consonant sound requires another vowel to complete the consonant-vowel pattern. (Except for “n” and “m” for which we have 「ン」)
For “t” and “d”, it’s usually “o”. For everything else, it’s usually “u”.
As mentioned before, Katakana is mainly used for words imported from foreign languages. It can also be used to emphasize certain words similar to the function of italics. For a more complete list of usages, refer to the Wikipedia entry on katakana.
Katakana represents the same set of phonetic sounds as Hiragana except all the characters are different. Since foreign words must fit into this limited set of [consonants+vowel] sounds, they undergo many radical changes resulting in instances where English speakers can’t understand words that are supposed to be derived from English! As a result, the use of Katakana is extremely difficult for English speakers because they expect English words to sound like… well… English. Instead, it is better to completely forget the original English word, and treat the word as an entirely separate Japanese word, otherwise you can run into the habit of saying English words with English pronunciations (whereupon a Japanese person may or may not understand what you are saying).
Katakana is significantly tougher to master compared to Hiragana because it is only used for certain words and you don’t get nearly as much practice as you do with Hiragana. To learn the proper stroke order (and yes, you need to), here is a link to practice sheets for Katakana.
Also, since Japanese doesn’t have any spaces, sometimes the symbol 「・」 is used to show the spaces like 「ロック・アンド・ロール」 for “rock and roll”. Using the symbol is completely optional so sometimes nothing will be used at all.
Notes
All the sounds are identical to what they were for Hiragana.
As we will learn later, 「を」 is only ever used as a particle and all particles are in Hiragana. Therefore, you will almost never need to use 「ヲ」 and it can be safely ignored. (Unless you are reading very old telegrams or something.)
The four characters 「シ」、「ン」、「ツ」、and 「ソ」 are fiendishly similar to each other. Basically, the difference is that the first two are more “horizontal” than the second two. The little lines are slanted more horizontally and the long line is drawn in a curve from bottom to top. The second two have almost vertical little lines and the long line doesn’t curve as much as it is drawn from top to bottom. It is almost like a slash while the former is more like an arc. These characters are hard to sort out and require some patience and practice.
The characters 「ノ」、「メ」、and 「ヌ」 are also something to pay careful attention to, as well as, 「フ」、「ワ」、 and 「ウ」. Yes, they all look very similar. No, I can’t do anything about it.
You must learn the correct stroke order and direction! Use the following pdf practice sheets to practice.
Sometimes 「・」 is used to denote what would be spaces in English.
The Long Vowel Sound
Long vowels have been radically simplified in Katakana. Instead of having to muck around thinking about vowel sounds, all long vowel sounds are denoted by a simple dash like so: ー.
Examples
ツアー (tsu-a) – tour
メール (me-ru) – email
ケーキ (ke-ki) – cake
Summary
All long vowel sounds in Katakana are denoted by a dash. For example, “cute” would be written in Katakana like so: 「キュート」.
The Small 「ア、イ、ウ、エ、オ」
Due to the limitations of the sound set in Hiragana, some new combinations have been devised over the years to account for sounds that were not originally in Japanese. Most notable is the lack of the / ti / di / and / tu / du / sounds (because of the / chi / tsu / sounds), and the lack of the / f / consonant sound except for 「ふ」. The / sh / j / ch / consonants are also missing for the / e / vowel sound. The decision to resolve these deficiencies was to add small versions of the five vowel sounds. This has also been done for the / w / consonant sound to replace the obsolete characters. In addition, the convention of using the little double slashes on the 「ウ」 vowel （ヴ） with the small 「ア、イ、エ、オ」 to designate the / v / consonant has also been established but it’s not often used probably due to the fact that Japanese people still have difficulty pronouncing / v /. For instance, while you may guess that “volume” would be pronounced with a / v / sound, the Japanese have opted for the easier to pronounce “bolume” （ボリューム）. In the same way, vodka is written as “wokka” （ウォッカ） and not 「ヴォッカ」. You can write “violin” as either 「バイオリン」 or 「ヴァイオリン」. It really doesn’t matter however because almost all Japanese people will pronounce it with a / b / sound anyway. The following table shows the added sounds that were lacking with a highlight. Other sounds that already existed are reused as appropriate.
Additional sounds
v
w
f
ch
d
t
j
sh
ヴァ
ワ
ファ
チャ
ダ
タ
ジャ
シャ
a
ヴィ
ウィ
フィ
チ
ディ
ティ
ジ
シ
i
ヴ
ウ
フ
チュ
ドゥ
トゥ
ジュ
シュ
u
ヴェ
ウェ
フェ
チェ
デ
テ
ジェ
シェ
e
ヴォ
ウォ
フォ
チョ
ド
ト
ジョ
ショ
o
Notes
Notice that there is no / wu / sound. For example, the Katakana for “woman” is written as “u-man” （ウーマン）.
While the / tu / sound (as in “too”) can technically be produced given the rules as 「トゥ」, foreign words that have become popular before these sounds were available simply used / tsu / to make do. For instance, “tool” is still 「ツール」 and “tour” is similarly still 「ツアー」.
Back in the old days, without these new sounds, there was no choice but to just take characters off the regular table without regard for actual pronunciation. On old buildings, you may still see 「ビルヂング」 instead of the modern spelling 「ビルディング」.
Some examples of words in Katakana
Translating English words into Japanese is a knack that requires quite a bit of practice and luck. To give you a sense of how English words become “Japanified”, here are a few examples of words in Katakana. Sometimes the words in Katakana may not even be correct English or have a different meaning from the English word it’s supposed to represent. Of course, not all Katakana words are derived from English.
Though I already mentioned that there are many sites and helper programs for learning Hiragana, I figured I should put in some exercises of my own in the interest of completeness. I’ve removed the obsolete characters since you won’t need to know them. I suggest playing around with this chart and a scrap piece of paper to test your knowledge of Hiragana.
Click on the flip link to show or hide each character.
In this section, we will practice writing some words in Hiragana. This is the only part of this guide where we will be using the English alphabet to represent Japanese sounds. I’ve added bars between each letter to prevent the ambiguities that is caused by romaji such as “un | yo” vs “u | nyo”. Don’t get too caught up in the romaji spellings. Remember, the whole point is to test your aural memory with Hiragana. I hope to replace this with sound in the future to remove the use of romaji altogether.
Now we’re going to move on to practice writing Hiragana with the small 「や」、「ゆ」、「よ」 、and the long vowel sound. For the purpose of this exercise, I will denote the long vowel sound as “－” and leave you to figure out which Hiragana to use based on the letter preceding it.
Now let’s practice reading some Hiragana. I want to particularly focus on correctly reading the small 「つ」. Remember to not get too caught up in the unavoidable inconsistencies of romaji. The point is to check whether you can figure out how it’s supposed to sound in your mind.
