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Syllabary of Japanese Language

Japanese language only has five vowels, a, i, u, e and o.
This is Japanese syllabary.

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

Hu(Fu)

He

Ho

Ma

Mi

Mu

Me

Mo

Ya

Yu

Yo

Ra(La)

Ri(Li)

Ru(Lu)

Re(Le)

Ro(Lo)

Wa

Wo

N


And dull sounds are below.

Ga

Gi

Gu

Ge

Go

Za

Ji

Zu

Ze

Zo

Da

De

Do

Ba

Bi

Bu

Be

Bo


These are all pronunciations we have.
How symple, isn't it?

We can create all Japanese words with conbination of syllabaries.
KA-TSU-DO-N, TO-N-KA-TSU, U-DO-N, MI-RI-N,... See?


There are some features ofJapanese syllabary.

  1. absence of "V"
  2. confusion of "L" and "R"
  3. stable existance of vowels


First is that we don't have "V".
That's why it's very difficult for Japanese to pronounce "V", like Vinegar, Visit, driVe, and so on.
We tend to speak missound "B" instead of "V".

We are in the same situation for "TH"or "PH" as "V".
Japanese have to be careful just to say "THank you".


Second is confusion of "L" and "R".
Our language doesn't pay much attention for the difference of "L" and "R",
and we tend to speak using "L" instead of "R".

In other language, almost all Japanese are not good at distinguishing the words
containing "L" from ones containing "R".
For example, "Room" and "Loom" sounds same to us!


Third is that vowels are strong.
Each part of Japanese words have vowels and we pronunce strong.
For example, SA-TO-U, SA-KE, MI-RI-N, SA-KA-NA, SYO-U-YU,.... all have vowels.

Many Japanese seem to put vowels in the end of the words even in other language,
like morningU, shrimpU, sportsU, and tend to pronounce the last vowel strong.



How can we input Japanese words on PC?
There are two ways.

One is using Japanese characters on lower half of keys.
The other is inputing by alphabet on upper half.

Old people who are not familier with alphabet prefer to Japanese character keys,
however few choose this way of input these days.


In Italia, there are its own characters on lower half of key-board.


It's very interesting!