Lesson 1: Hiragana. The syllabaries

Transcription

1 Lesson 1: Hiragana The first step we will take on your journey through MangaLand will be to learn a little about the Japanese writing system: we are obviously talking about those inscriptions which many of you may have encountered. In these few first lessons you will need to put forth a great effort in order to learn the two syllabaries. The syllabaries The syllabaries are essential for the correct learning of the Japanese language. Most Japanese textbooks use rõmaji that is, the Romanized alphabet to teach the beginner. However, rõmaji eventually becomes inadequate, as knowing only spoken Japanese is the same as being illiterate. If you wish to learn Japanese at all levels and, especially, if you wish to be able to read magazines or comic books, your study must include learning how to read and write the two Japanese syllabaries. This will be the first step towards a sound learning of the language. You must get used to Japanese characters as soon as possible, so we will start with the writing basics. In Japanese there is no such thing as an alphabet as we know it. Instead, there are two syllabaries called hiragana and katakana. A Japanese character usually equals a two-letter syllable in our language (that is why they are called syllabaries. ) Thus, the character is read ka. There is only one exception: the sound n, the only consonant sound that can go on its own. Both hiragana and katakana have 46 syllabic symbols, each equivalent to its corresponding symbol in the other syllabary in pronunciation but written differently. For instance, the hiragana character and the katakana character are both read chi. It may seem strange or unnecessary, but less so when you consider that we have a very similar system: upper case and lower case letters. Try thinking on the purely formal similitude between a and A, or between g and G. Do they look the same? Japanese has kanji as well, ideograms taken from Chinese during the period from the 3 rd century to the 6 th century AD, which represent concepts rather than sounds. There are many kanji (an estimated number of more than 50,000) but only 3,000 (more or less) are usually and frequently used, out of which 1,945 are considered common use (l.3) and must compulsorily be studied at school. The subject in this first lesson is the hiragana syllabary, undoubtedly the most basic and essential to learn the basis of the Japanese language Lesson 1

2 On Japanese writing Before we get started, it s worth knowing a few basic aspects of Japanese writing. As you must know, Japanese can be written using the traditional style (vertically and from right to left), but it can also be written the way we write, using the Western style (horizontally and from left to right). Although newspapers and manga, for example, tend to use the traditional style, both methods are generally used in Japan nowadays, perhaps with a slight predominance of the Western style over the traditional. Therefore, it is essential to become familiar with both. Indeed, many books, magazines, comic books and printed material in general are read backwards. Then, in Japanese books, the cover is placed where we would usually find the back cover, and that is why they are read left to right, just the opposite of Western books. If you think about it, this is not so odd; Arabic books, for that matter, are opened the same way. Japanese punctuation marks are also different. A period is written with a small circle ( ) and comas point upwards, the opposite from what we are used to ( ). In addition, Japanese has opening ( ) and closing ( ) square brackets, which are equivalent to our quotation marks. However, there are several other punctuation marks which we all know and are exactly the same, such as question marks ( ), exclamation marks ( ), etc. Hiragana After this general introduction to Japanese writing, we will fully go into the subject we are dealing with in this first lesson: the hiragana syllabary. Pay attention to the table on the following page, because you will need to learn it very well: it is essential to learn how to read and write hiragana fluently as soon as possible. Bear in mind you must follow a particular stroke order to write each one of the characters (it may not seem so, but stroke order is very important.) At the end of this same lesson you will find a writing guide for each of the basic hiragana characters, where each stroke order is specified. The hiragana syllabary is the most used of the two, because it is used to write strictly Japanese words, unlike katakana, which is mainly used for words of foreign origin (as we will see in l.2). Hiragana is used when a word can t be written in kanji, the kanji character is not officially recognized as a kanji of common use, or if the writer doesn t remember the corresponding kanji. Likewise, particles (l.16) and verb endings are written using the signs in this syllabary. Hiragana is what Japanese children learn first when they study how to write; therefore, all children s reading books are entirely written in this syllabary. Later, as children increase their knowledge, katakana and kanji are introduced. Hiragana 17

3 Complete list of hiragana characters Pure sounds Impure sounds Diphthongs a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko ga gi gu ge go kya kyu kyo gya gyu gyo sa shi su se so za ji zu ze zo sha shu sho ja ju jo ta chi tsu te to da ji zu de do cha chu cho na ni nu ne no nya nyu nyo ha hi fu he ho ba bi bu be bo pa pi pu pe po hya hyu hyo bya byu byo pya pyu pyo ma mi mu me mo mya myu myo ya yu yo ra ri ru re ro rya ryu ryo wa (w)o n Syllabary description There are 46 basic sounds, which you can see in the first column of the above syllabary. First learn these characters, because later on you will find it infinitely easier to learn by heart the so-called impure or derivative sounds. Note: You have probably noticed that there are two ji sounds ( and ) and two zu sounds ( and.) These are, indeed, pronounced exactly the same way, but their usage is different. For the time being, let s say that we will almost always use and, and hardly ever the other two Lesson 1

4 In the second column we see the list of impure sounds derived from other sounds. Note that the ka ( ) syllable is the same as ga ( ), but ga has two small lines on the top right-hand corner of the sign (the voicing or muffling mark); the same applies when we go from the s line to the z one, from t to d, and from h to b. Notice, too, how to obtain the p sounds we must only place a small circle (the occlusive mark) on top of the characters in the h line. Ex. (ha) (pa). In the third column, we finally find the diphthongs, combinations of the characters in the i column ( ki, shi, chi, ni, hi, mi) with those in the y line ( ya, yu, yo), the later ones written in a smaller size. These combinations are used to represent more complex sounds, such as cha, hyo or gyu. There is no l sound in Japanese. So, whenever we need to write or pronounce a foreign word with the letter l in it, we will have to replace it with a soft r. Lance, for example, would be pronounced Ransu. No, this is not wrong, nor have you misread anything. Because of this pronunciation difficulty, many Japanese seem to find themselves misunderstood when they travel abroad. Words such as right and light, or fry and fly, tend to sound the same, or even worse, please sit may become please shit! This can cause som startling or awkward conversations. Don t worry about it for the moment, because we will never use hiragana to transcribe our names into Japanese. (We will see more about this in lessons 2 and 8.) Pronunciation Japanese is pronounced with very few sounds, all of them very simple and basic. Thus, it can pose a problem for English speakers because sounds in our language are rather complicated or twisted. Let s have a look at the pronunciation of the Japanese vowels: The a as in father. The i as in machine. The u as in recuperate. The e as in set. The o as in cooperate. The g is always pronounced as in get and never as in gentle. The r is always in pronounced in the Spanish fashion (not the rolling trill, don t worry). It s somewhat between the l and the r and can be the most difficult sound to get right. Examples in Spanish: Sonora, Merida. The ch as in church. The tsu as the tz-u part of Ritz Uruguay Hiragana 19

5 Manga-examples We are now going to see some examples of hiragana usage. In this course we will always see examples inspired by real Japanese manga to illustrate what has been explained in the theory pages. As they say, a mangaexample is worth a thousand words. a) Yawn Studio Kõsen Katsuko: fuwaa... (Onomatopoeia for a yawn.) This first example shows us Katsuko waking up and saying: fuwaa... The drawing and the character s pose make this onomatopoeia s meaning obvious, so we don t need to expand on this. This manga-example shows just how easy it is to practice reading hiragana with any Japanese manga you can get hold of. Onomatopoeia and sound effects written in the hiragana syllabary abounds in the pages of manga; recognizing them and starting to read them, although you may not clearly understand their meaning, is already a very satisfactory first step and good motivation to pursue your Japanese studies with enthusiasm. (You have a glossary of onomatopoeia in Appendix iii.) Note: You may have noticed the small, curious tsu ( ) character at the end of the exclamation. This means the sound stops abruptly; that is, it ends sharply. You will often find the small tsu ( ), indicating a sharp ending, in comic books, where it is profusely used. However, you will hardly find this sound effect in any other type of text Lesson 1

6 b) Laughing Guillermo March Mifu: ahahahahahahahahahahaha (Onomatopoeia for laugh.) Tatsu: hehehehehehehehehehehehe (Onomatopoeia for laugh.) Here we see Tatsu and Mifu the instant they meet. Their reaction is most curious: what exactly do those giggles written in hiragana indicate? Onomatopoeia for sounds produced by manga human characters (laughs, doubts, screams...) are usually written in hiragana, unlike sounds caused by human acts, things and animals (barks, explosions, blows...), which are usually written in katakana, as we will see in lesson 2. However, don t take this as an inflexible rule; depending on the author and his or her taste, the use of the syllabaries in manga can vary greatly. c) Particles and desinences In this third example we find two of the most characteristic uses of the hiragana syllabary. With this syllabary we write the units which constitute the true skeleton of sentences. Grammatical particles, essential in Japanese grammar (as we will Kazuhiro: boku ga kowashita!? see in l.16), are always written me sp break!? in hiragana. Here we have an I broke it?! example of one of them, (ga), which is used to mark the subject in the sentence, that is, the person who is performing the action. In this case, boku ( I ), is who performs the action. Verbal desinences are also written in hiragana, through them we know whether a verb is conjugated in the present tense, past tense, etc. In this case, the hiragana, indicating past tense (l.20) has been added to the kanji. Thus, (kowashita) means I broke. Hiragana 21

7 d) Cohabitation of hiragana, katakana and kanji J.M. Ken Niimura Tarõ: washi yori hansamu na no wa sugimoto akira dake da I more handsome than sugimoto akira only be Only Akira Sugimoto is more handsome than me. Sugimoto:... waai arigatõ he he he... wow! thanks he he he Well, thanks! He, he, he. This last example scarcely bears any relation to the rest of this first lesson. It shows us one of the most curious characteristics of the Japanese language. We are talking about the usage of the three Japanese writing forms in the same sentence: the two syllabaries (hiragana and katakana) and kanji. Note the whole text is written in hiragana, the true skeleton of sentences, apart from hansamu which comes from English and is, therefore, written in katakana (l.2) and Sugimoto Akira, written in kanji with the corresponding reading above in small hiragana characters called furigana. Furigana is often used in texts aimed at children or young people such as shõnen comic books (for boys) or shõjo comic books (for girls) to give young readers who still haven t mastered kanji reading some help that will enable them to comfortably read the text. Of course, these kinds of manga can be very useful for reading practice for a student of Japanese! Note 1: Sugimoto s T-shirt says aho, which means stupid (l.23). Note 2: The structure for Japanese proper nouns for people is surname + name, not the other way round. Here, Sugimoto is the surname and Akira the name, so we would call this person Akira Sugimoto. Vocabulary: Washi = I (used mainly by older males, l.7) yori = more than hansamu-na = handsome (from the English word) dake = only da = verb to be, simple form (L.7) arigatõ = thanks ) Lesson 1

8 Strictly speaking, does the Japanese language use an alphabet? How many Western letters is a hiragana sign usually equivalent to when transcribed? What types of script do we use to write Japanese? (3 kinds) 2 3 How is manga usually written: horizontally and from left to right (Western style) or vertically and from right to left (traditional style)? What do we use the hiragana syllabary for? 4 5 Write in Japanese the following syllables: te, mu, i and sa. Transcribe into English the following hiragana signs:,, and. 6 7 Write in Japanese the impure syllables de, pi, da and za. Transcribe into English the following hiragana:,, and. 8 Exercises 9 How do we form complex sounds (diphthongs) such as cha, hyo, jo? Write them in Japanese. How do we pronounce in Japanese the g in Sugimoto? Like the g in get or like the g in gentle? 10 Hiragana 23

9 a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko sa shi!#$ su EF &($$ GHI )*$$ so J +,$ ta KLMN /01$ chi OP 234$ tsu Q 5678 te R 9$$$ to ST :;=$ na UVWX?@$$ YZ[ ABC$ nu ]^ D se ni ne _` 24 1 Lesson 1

10 no ha hi fu he ho ma mi mu me mo ya a yu ƒ bcd$$ yo e$$ ra ˆ fghi$ ri Š j $ ru klmn$ re opq ro rs$$$ wa tuv$ wx$$ yz{$ wo n } $$ Hiragana 25