Teach Us, Teacher

The writing system of Japanese (Lesson 1)

The Japanese language has three types of script, each with its own specific role. When you write WATASHI WA ANNA DESU (I'm Anna), the noun for "I," WATASHI, is written in "Kanji." WA, DESU and other particles that indicate grammatical functions are written in "Hiragana." Verbs and adjectives are written in Kanji and Hiragana combined. And foreign names and loan words, or words that have come from foreign languages, such as "Anna", ANNA, are written in "Katakana."

Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic symbols, each representing one syllable. Japanese has five vowels: a, i, u, e, o. And it has nine consonants. In Japanese, each vowel by itself and a set of a consonant and a vowel form one syllable. The exception is the character for the sound, "n."

Try to write your names in Japanese, referring to the tables of its writing system in the textbook for this program or on this website.