The first step we will take on your journey through MangaLand will be tolearn a little about the Japanese writing system: we are obviously talkingabout those inscriptions which many of you may have encountered. Inthese few first lessons you will need to put forth a great effort in order tolearn the two syllabaries.

The syllabariesThe syllabaries are essential for the correct learning of the Japanese language. Most

Japanese textbooks use rmaji that is, the Romanized alphabet to teach the begin-

ner. However, rmaji 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 learn-

ing 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 corres-

ponding 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

3rd century to the 6th 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.

O

yo

ri

zo

m

th

b

re

fi

W

ar

(

Ja

q

kn

H

w

o

h

ra

le

st

Ja

w

ch

re

te

fo

in

16 1 Lesson 1

Lesson 1: Hiragana

11

tongn

to

st

n-

se

y,

n-

ds

as

an

nd

at

ne

s-

or

ry

al

he

re

or

e

ic

On Japanese writingBefore we get started, its 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 (hori-

zontally 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.

HiraganaAfter 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 cha-

racters (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 cant be written in kanji, the kanji

character is not officially recognized as a kanji of common use, or if the writer doesnt

remember the corresponding kanji. Likewise, particles (l.16) and verb endings are writ-

ten using the signs in this syllabary.

Hiragana is what Japanese children learn first when they study how to write; there-

fore, all childrens reading books are entirely written in this syllabary. Later, as children

increase their knowledge, katakana and kanji are introduced.

Hiragana 17

1

Syllabary descriptionThere are 46 basic sounds, which you can see in the first column of the above syl-

labary. 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, lets say that we will almost always use and ,

and hardly ever the other two.

N

to

w

o

in

ya

to

re

ex

an

se

f

sh

sc

P

T

ra

Ja

18 1 Lesson 1

a i u e o

ka ki ku ke ko

sa shi su se so

ta chi tsu te to

na ni nu ne no

ha hi fu he ho

ma mi mu me mo

ya yu yo

ra ri ru re ro

wa (w)o

n

ga gi gu ge go

za ji zu ze zo

da ji zu de do

ba bi bu be bo

pa pi pu pe po

kya kyu kyo

gya gyu gyo

sha shu sho

ja ju jo

cha chu cho

nya nyu nyo

hya hyu hyo

bya byu byo

pya pyu pyo

mya myu myo

rya ryu ryo

Complete list of hiragana charactersPure sounds Impure sounds Diphthongs

1

yl-

to

zu

eir

,

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 fo-

reign 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 them-

selves 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.

Dont worry about it for the moment, because we will never use hiragana to tran-

scribe our names into Japanese. (We will see more about this in lessons 2 and 8.)

PronunciationJapanese 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. Lets 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, dont

worry). Its 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

1

We are now going to see some examples of hiragana usage. In this coursewe will always see examples inspired by real Japanese manga to illustratewhat has been explained in the theory pages. As they say, a manga-example is worth a thousand words.

20 1 Lesson 1

This first example shows us Katsuko waking up and saying: fuwaa... The drawing and

the characters pose make this onomatopoeias meaning obvious, so we dont 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 enthu-

siasm. (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.

a) Yawn

Stud

io K

sen

Katsuko:fuwaa...(Onomatopoeia for a yawn.)

H

ex

O

sc

an

w

H

ta

je

bo

th

et

k

Manga-examples

setea-

nd

to

ny

he

to

ry

u-

he

ill

is

of

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, dont 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.

Hiragana 21

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. Gram-

matical particles, essential in

Japanese grammar (as we will

see in l.16), are always written

in hiragana. Here we have an

example of one of them, (ga),

which is used to mark the sub-

ject 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.

b) Laughing

c) Particles and desinences

Mifu: Tatsu:ahahahahahahahahahahaha hehehehehehehehehehehehe(Onomatopoeia for laugh.) (Onomatopoeia for laugh.)

Kazuhiro:boku ga kowashita!?me sp break!?I broke it?!

Gui

llerm

o M

arch

1

22 1 Lesson 1

d) Cohabitation of hiragana, katakana and kanji

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 shnen comic books (for boys) or shjo comic

books (for girls) to give young readers who still havent 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: Sugimotos 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) | arigat = thanks).

J.M. K

en N

iimur

a

Tar:washi yori hansamu na no wa sugimoto akira dake daI more handsome than sugimoto akira only beOnly Akira Sugimoto is more handsome than me.

Sugimoto: ...waai arigat he he he...wow! thanks he he heWell, thanks! He, he, he.

1

Hiragana 23

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ut

es

m

na

ng

ed

ic

me

ga

he

we

|

,

Strictly speaking, does the Japanese lan-guage use an alphabet? How manyWestern letters is a hiragana sign usual-ly equivalent to when transcribed?

What types of script do we use to writeJapanese? (3 kinds)

How is manga usually written: horizon-tally and from left to right (Westernstyle) or vertically and from right to left(traditional style)?

What do we use the hiragana syllabaryfor?

Write in Japanese the following sylla-bles: te, mu, i and sa.

Transcribe into English the followinghiragana signs: , , and .

Write in Japanese the impure syllablesde, pi, da and za.

Transcribe into English the followinghiragana: , , and .

How do we form complex sounds(diphthongs) such as cha, hyo, jo? Writethem in Japanese.

How do we pronounce in Japanese theg in Sugimoto? Like the g in get orlike the g in gentle?

ExercisesExercises

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