Information Sheet 1.

2-1

Introducing Japanese Basic Sounds

Learning Objectives:
After reading this INFORMATION SHEET, YOU MUST be able to:

1. Clearly pronounced the Japanese Vowels

2. Learn the different pitches of Japanese reading.
3. Identify the different writing system.

Basic Sounds
Japanese has a moderate inventory of consonants and only 5 vowels, and most
of the sounds exist in English or have a close equivalent.
Japanese has five basic vowels:

a, which sounds like the vowel in aha

i, which sounds like the vowel in eat
u, which sounds like the vowel in boot, but without lip rounding
e, which sounds like the vowel in eight
o, which sounds like the vowel in oat

The Sounds of Japanese

k, g, s, sh, z, j, t, ch, ts, d, n, h, f, b, p, m, y, r,

Consonants w

Vowels a, i, u, e, o
Table 1

Syllable Structures

The Japanese sound system is heavily based on the mora, the basic unit
of sound in Japanese. Each mora takes roughly the same amount of time in
Japanese speech.
 You can think of a mora as a sort of simple syllable. With a couple
exceptions, each mora contains one vowel and may start with a single
consonant or a combination of a consonant followed by a 'y'.
Here are some examples:
Mora Type Example

a single vowel a

consonant + vowel se

consonant + 'y' + vowel kyo

Table 2

Doubled Vowels and Consonants

The vowel of one mora can be lengthened by adding another vowel directly after
it. The rule is as follows:
Spelling Pronunciation

aa aa

ii ii

uu uu

ei/ee ee

ou/oo oo
Table 3

"Doubled consonants" work similarly. The mouth takes the shape of the
consonant, and holds it for an extra mora. This results in an extended sound
for 's' and 'sh', and a brief pause for the rest. Only certain consonants can be
doubled:
Single Double

k kk

s ss

sh ssh

t tt
 ch *tch/cch

ts tts

p pp
Table 4
*tch is the typical spelling, since 'ch' starts with the tongue in the same
position as 't', but the second spelling is sometimes used instead.

Japanese pitch accent  is a feature of the Japanese language that

distinguishes words by accenting particular morae in most Japanese dialects.
The nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between
dialects. For instance, the word for "now" is [iꜜma] in the Tokyo dialect, with
the accent on the first mora (or equivalently, with a downstep in pitch between
the first and second morae), but in the Kansai dialect it is [i.maꜜ]. A
final [i] or [ɯ] is often devoiced to [i̥] or [ɯ̥] after a downstep and an unvoiced
consonant.
Pitch can make a difference in word meanings in Japanese. For example,
in Tokyo Japanese, the two-syllable word ame means rain if the first syllable is
in high pitch and the second syllable is in low pitch, but it means candy if the
first syllable is in low pitch and the second syllable is in high pitch.

The Four Pitch Accent Patters

There are four pitch accent patterns that a word can fall into to. Let’s
take a look at each one now.
The first pattern is called へいばん which means “flat.” It starts
low on the first mora and then rises up on the second mora. It then stays
high for the remainder of the word.
The second pattern is called あたまだか which means “head high.”
It starts high on the first mora (hence the name) and then falls low on
the second mora. It then stays low for the remainder of the word.
Once a pitch falls from high to low in a word, it then stays that way
for the rest of the word. It will not raise a second time.
The third pattern is called なかだか which means “middle high.” It
starts low on the first mora and then raises high on the second mora.
Then, somewhere later in the word it will drop back to low.
The exact placement of where it drops depends on the specific
word. Longer words have more opportunities to drop from, so they
become a little more important to look up to see when the timing is
correct.
 The fourth pattern is called おだか which means “tail high.” This
pattern is similar to the first one because it starts low on the first mora,
raises high on the second mora, and then stays high for the remainder of
the word.

Let’s take a look at how this actually occurs with a few Japanese words
and some illustrations that show it. I will label each mora as low or high, but
that is just to help you see the direction of the pitch’s movement if and when it
changes.
いぬ (low – high) = Dog
ねこ (high – low) = Cat
がくせい (low – high – high – high) = Student
せんせい (low – high – high – low) = Teacher
あいさつ (high – low – low – low) = Greetings

THE SCRIPTS
Japanese consists of two scripts (referred to as kana)
called Hiragana and Katakana, which are two versions of the same set of
sounds in the language. Hiragana and Katakana consist of a little less than 50
“letters”, which are actually simplified Chinese characters adopted to form a
phonetic script.
Chinese characters, called Kanji in Japanese, are also heavily used in
the Japanese writing. Most of the words in the Japanese written language are
written in Kanji (nouns, verbs, adjectives). There exists over 40,000 Kanji
where about 2,000 represent over 95% of characters actually used in written
text. There are no spaces in Japanese so Kanji is necessary in distinguishing
between separate words within a sentence. Kanji is also useful for
discriminating between homophones, which occurs quite often given the
limited number of distinct sounds in Japanese.
Hiragana is used mainly for grammatical purposes. We will see this as
we learn about particles. Words with extremely difficult or rare Kanji, colloquial
expressions, and onomatopoeias are also written in Hiragana. It’s also often
used for beginning Japanese students and children in place of Kanji they don’t
know.
While Katakana represents the same sounds as Hiragana, it is mainly
used to represent newer words imported from western countries (since there
are no Kanji associated with words based on the roman alphabet). The next
three sections will cover Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.
KANA
First and foremost are the syllabaries Hiragana and Katakana, known
together as Kana. A syllabary is much like an alphabet, except that each
symbol represents an entire syllable like "ka". (More specifically, each Kana
symbol represents one mora, a distinction that we'll examine in greater detail.)
So Hiragana is spelled hi-ra-ga-na and Katakana as ka-ta-ka-na.
Hiragana and Katakana each have 46 symbols, representing the same 46
basic syllables. Additional sounds are derived from these using several
additional conventions. This works well in languages like Japanese that have a
small inventory of sounds and a simple syllable structure. In fact, any
Japanese word can be written using Hiragana or Katakana alone.
So what's the difference? Quite simply, Hiragana is used for writing
native Japanese words (ひらがな/Hiragana, かたかな/Katakana) and Katakana
for borrowed words ( テ レ ビ /terebi/television), sounds effects ( ド
ン /don/"boom"), emphasis (like English italics), and the like. Other than the
basic syllables and a couple of conventions for creating voiced ("da" vs "ta"),
lengthened ("so-o" vs "so"), and combined sounds ("hyo" vs "hi-yo"), you can
count the remaining spelling rules on one hand.

KANJI
The Chinese characters, make up the final (sort of) native Japanese
script. Originally, the Japanese had no writing system of their own, and
instead wrote in classical Chinese (this being around the year 700 AD). Later,
Kana syllabaries were derived from a small set of characters being used for
their phonetic value (called Man'yougana), Hiragana from cursive versions and
Katakana from pieces of the originals. Over time the Japanese developed a
method of writing their language using Kanji to write the roots of nouns, verbs,
and adjectives and Kana to write inflections of verbs and adjectives,
grammatical elements unique to Japanese, and words having no Kanji.
Today, there are about 2000 Kanji recommended by the government for
for general use, the Joyo Kanji; it takes this number of Kanji to be able to read
a Japanese newspaper, and is the basic literacy requirement in Japanese. This
is in contrast to the more than 5000 characters used in modern written
Chinese and the 30,000+ total characters.
But why use Kanji at all when you can write anything in Japanese using
just Kana? The answer is too long to get into at the moment, but the basic idea
is this: modern Japanese has a large number of homophones (words with the
same or very similar pronunciation but different meanings). This isn't a
problem in speaking, where context clues and intonation can resolve an
ambiguity, but in writing this is a major issue. But since Kanji
are ideographic characters, meaning they represent meaning rather than
sound, the writer simply chooses the Kanji or Kanji compound that matches
their intended meaning. So while Kanji are without a doubt more difficult to
learn and write, they make Japanese easier to read.

Horizontal and Vertical Writing

Like Chinese, Japanese is traditionally written vertically, with columns
going from right to left. Nowadays, Japanese is very often written horizontally,
in which case it is left-to-right, top-to-bottom, just like English.

As a result, rotating the text 90 degrees allows you to switch from one
layout to the other – this is how a Japanese-enabled word processor works.
Continuing uses of vertical writing include novels, comics, formal letters,
calligraphy, and vertical signs. Mixed text is common as well.

References:
https://www.japaneseprofessor.com/lessons/beginning/a-guide-to-japanese-
pronunciation/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
https://japanesetactics.com/what-is-pitch-accent-in-japanese
https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/646/how-important-is-ones-
pitch-when-speaking-japanese
http://guidetojapanese.org/learn/category/grammar-guide/the-writing-
system/
Beginning Japanese, Your Pathway To Dynamic Language Acquisition, by
Michael L. Kluemper, Lisa Berkson, Nathan Patton, Nobuko Patton, Tuttle
Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
 Self- Check 1.2-1

Identification. Please write the correct answer that being ask to each
number. Write your answer on the blank provided.

______________________ 1. A type of Japanese writing system which used mainly

for grammatical purposes.

______________________ 2. It represents the same sounds as Hiragana, it is

mainly used to represent newer words imported from
western countries.

______________________ 3. In what direction does Japanese is traditionally

written in columns from right to left.

______________________ 4. Nowadays, Japanese is very often written in what

direction which case it is left-to-right, top-to-bottom,
just like English.

______________________ 5. Type of writing system which written in borrowed

Chinese characters, and are also heavily used in the
Japanese writing.