Part 2: Hiragana
こんいちわ みんなーさん (konnichiwa minna san) and welcome to the second
part of lesson 3. I'm sorry that this lesson was delayed (my net connection died for a while >_<) And besides I'm
sure you all needed that extra time to practice Katakana ^_^. So before we begin here are
some words in katakana for you
to practice with. If you still can't get your browser to support kanji
click here.
1 セーラースータース
2 マズ
3 プリンス デマンド
4 コンピューター
5 コードネマ
6 ムーン クリスタル パワーメイク アーップ！
7 バーニング マンダラ！
8 クラウン
9 タクシード
10 ヴィーナス
Answers: sailor stars, mars, prince demando, computer,
code name, moon crystal power make-up!! (^_^), burning
mandala, tuxedo, Venus.
And now on with our
lesson:
Hiragana
The structure in Hiragana, is identical to katakana,
with the same amount of characters and the same permutations. I'll
go over them in brief here for you:
X -> X" -> Xｰ
K -> G
S -> Z
T -> D
H -> B -> P
Here's a chart of the basic characters: (at
the end of this lesson is a link to a full alphabet, with all the
characters of both hiragana, and katakana, which I suggest you should print out)
An important thing to remember here is
this: If you see a small letter tsu (つ) before
another character, then the consonant of that character is
doubled: like in shippou (tail) which is written しっぽう
the tsu means
that the "p" of the po (ぽ) sound is doubled. Another thing to
remember is that when I've been writing in Japanese throughout
these lessons, I've taken care to exaggerate the spaces between
the words. In standard Japanese this is not so, and usually
there are no spaces between the words at all. However,
once you learn the basic word endings, and increase your
vocabulary you will not find it to be as much of a
problem as it first appears to be.
As the structure of hiragana is the same
as that in katakana, I'm going straight into the practice
section ^_^.
1 つきの うさぎ
2 ちびーうさ
3 あいの みなこ
4 きの まこと
5 みずの あみ
6 ひの れい
7 ちば まもる
8 らんま 1/２
9 いぬやしゃ
10 かごめ
11あかね
12 はるか
12 はるか
Answers: Tsukino Usagi, Chibi-usa, Aino Minako, Kino Makoto,
Mizuno Ami, Hino Rei, Chiba Mamoru, Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, Kagome,
Akane, Haruka (Most of these names can/are also written in Kanji,
and I'll illustrate that next lesson)
Here is a full chart of both the
Hiragana and the Katakana, that you should print out, and look at
when you have time. It is a very well designed chart, and I
have found it to be very useful.
Note: since this is a small lesson, I will try to put up part
three (Intro to Kanji) up on Sunday, so we can jump right into
basic expressions next week ^_^. でわ また! (see you later)
As always, if you have any questions or comments feel free to
write to me at the address below ^_^.
