What Japanese Kana
You can use your computer keyboard or mouse to type japanese letters kanji hiragana and katakana with this online keyboard.
What japanese kana. It lists all kana in a grid system in aiueo columns. While katakana カタカナ represents the same sounds as hiragana it s mainly used to represent foreign words. Learning hiragana can be very easy with a few simple tools. Ruby characters or furigana are also used for kanji words in modern publications these would generally be omitted for well known kanji the text is in the traditional tategaki vertical writing style.
Foreign names are represented in katakana as are many foreign foods. Learning the hiragana alphabet is the very first step towards learning japanese. How does it translate into a sentence. Here s the basic breakdown of this unusual japanese sentence structure unusual to english speakers at least.
For new students learning japanese you ll eventually come across sentences ending with kana sometimes from the context it s difficult to tell what kana means. Kana 仮名 japanese pronunciation. The character can be combined with a dakuten to form が in hiragana ガ in katakana and ga in hepburn romanization the phonetic value of the modified character is ɡa in initial positions and varying between ŋa and ɣa. The first kana column is based on pronunciation and spelling.
Are the syllabaries that form parts of the japanese writing system contrasted with the logographic chinese characters known in japan as kanji 漢字 the modern japanese writing system makes use of two syllabaries. This allows the learner to get used to seeing the kana and reach it easily without having to memorize the keitai flick input on top of that. Kana 2 in the above table the entries in grey are words which could not be found in the dictionary and so the katakana was guessed based on the word s spelling. Katakaꜜna is a japanese syllabary one component of the japanese writing system along with hiragana kanji and in some cases the latin script known as rōmaji the word katakana means fragmentary kana as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji.
Japanese novel using kanji kana majiri bun text with both kanji and kana the most general orthography for modern japanese. Cursive hiragana ひらがな and angular katakana カタカナ also classified as kana is the ancient syllabic use of kanji known as. If japanese seems like a bunch of crazy squiggles you will never be able to read don t fret.
In kana mode click or press the space key to toggle between hiragana input and katakana input. Japanese natives already know the kana and thus can focus on how to efficiently use the flick method. This japanese keyboard enables you to easily type japanese online without installing japanese keyboard. One of the first things to learn is that the hiragana alphabet is actually a syllabary.