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Greetings ladies and gentlemen, proud citizen of eJapan. This is second part of Basic of Japanese by our lovely shirosakura. Lets not make it any longer, enjoy 😉



Hello everyone! I’m sorry for the delay! I’m ready to bring everyone the next part of the Japanese lesson!



Kanji are literally Chinese characters that were introduced to Japan over the course of hundreds of years, dating back to between the Kofun and Heian periods. Many Kanji mean the same thing as their Chinese counterpart, but many others were altered to make it easier for Japanese people to read, write and speak it. Kanji represent both meanings and sounds, and there are two readings to use for them: On-readings, the original, Chinese way of reading them, and Kun-readings, the Japanese readings added when these characters were added to Japanese. Both are used today, and it’s entirely possible for Kanji to have four, even five different types of pronunciation.





By the time the average Japanese student graduates high school, they are expected to know 2,136 Kanji in order to be fluent, on top of an obvious mastery of Japanese vocabulary and grammar. Reading things like newspaper and government documents become really hard otherwise.





Other Fun Stuff

Double Consonants:
Sometimes, you’ll find that consonants repeat themselves in words, like in kippu (ticket) and zasshi (magazine) that have double consonants. Since there isn’t a character for that, we use a small つ (literally っ) instead. Kippu becomes きっぷ and zasshi becomes ざっし. For double N however, it’s slightly different, using a ん instead. So, sannen (three years) would be さんねね

Double Vowels:
Like double consonants, double vowels exist too, and they operate in a slightly similar manner to double consonants, but with a few more rules. It’s important that you hold the vowels out too, as something as close as obasan (aunt) and obaasan (Grandma) can really get you in trouble! For the vowels A, I, and U, the patterns are the same.

aa – おばあさん (obaasan/grandmother)
ii – おじいさん (ojiisan/uncle)
uu – すうじ (suuji/number)

With the vowel E however, it isusually extended by adding an い (i) instead of an E.

ee –えいが (eega/movie)

And finally, with the vowel o, an u, or an う sound is added. This can also be done with o, or お in some words too,

oo - とうきょう (tokyo, pronouned toukyou)
oo - おおきい (ookii/big)



Dropped Vowels

And finally, the vowels I and u are sometimes dropped when placed between the consonants k, s, t, p, and h. An example is in the sentence s(u)kides(u), which looks like すきです in hiragana. What this means is, instead of saying “soo-kii-dee-soo,” it’s just “ski-dess”. Although, sometimes you’ll hear characters in anime pronouncing these just to be cute.

Next, I’ll get into grammar, with the first one being basic sentence structure! See you guys then!






Your Ministry of Culture, History and Education team:

Minister - Dr.Jekica
Vice Minister - Nanashi Senshi

Author of text: shirosakura