question about hiragana

[WalterWills]

I've been playing this game:

http://www.langexpress.com/Kana-Game.html

and I've noticed that there doesn't seem to be a symbol for certain things.

E.g. If I wanted to write "hajimemashite" I would write はじめまして based on the symbols that the game has for ha, ji, me, ma, shi, te

However, how would one write a word which has a double letter in romaji, such as "kekko"? Because there's a letter for "ke" and one for "ko", but not one for "k".

Or is "kekko" pronounced "keko", and so it's spelt in hiragana as it is pronounced?

[jiashen]

As you probably know, the double consonant indicates a short pause between the two words. I think it's called a glottal stop, like in Cockney slang. e.g. kekkon will have a pause between ke and ko. The way this is written in hiragana is to have a small 'tsu' where you'll find the pause. So it's 'ke' then small 'tsu' then 'ko'. There's the small 'tsu' on the bottom right hand side of the game.

It's quite fun, but my vocab is too lousy to play it haha.

[Javizy]

Just for sake of reference, it looks like this けっこ. They come up automatically when you type a double consonant, and you're supposed to write them like this by hand. This is also the case with single syllable sounds like kya, kyu, kyo, きゃ、きゅ、きょ, etc. Writing them like きや、きゆ、きよ, would correspond to kiya, kiyu, kiyo (all two syllables), which can cause a lot of confusion (e.g. today's newbie lesson has びょういん (byouin - hospital) and びよういん(biyouin - beauty parlour)). So get used to writing like this as soon as you can.

[WalterWills]

Thanks for the replies. I've also noticed that there are two characters for "ji", and they both sound the same to me. What's the difference?

[jiashen]

haha I had that question too when I was studying the kana charts. You probably also noticed that there are two 'zu's too. In my limited experience, they always use the shi with the two strokes as ji. And they use both for 'zu', like つづく("to continue") and くずす("to destroy"). say that one after the other ten times fast haha

[w2m0e501]

Just wondering something.

Why is it that Dōzo - which I understand as being Doozo is written like this どうぞ in Japanese and not like this どおぞ?

cheers,
joe

[Javizy]

Often, う is used to stretched vowels, so when you see 'ō', it's probably representing 'ou'. For example, しまう、いう、とうきょう、ありがとう, etc. お is rarely used as far as I know, but I do think there are some exceptions. Katakana, of course, is a different story, but in these cases it is denoted with a ー, like in ボール (ball).

This is exactly why you want to stop relying on romaji as soon as you can, but it does take a while getting used to two new alphabets (and that's without kanji), so keep up the kana practice がんばってね。

[WalterWills]

がんばってね。

So what does " がんばってね" mean?

To me it looks like "ganhattene" but is that even a word?


Also on this site: www.kanacards.com

It tells me that "i" sounds are pronounced "ee", as in "sheet". But I learnt from I book I have that the sentence, "Man hits two extra shots" tells you how each of the vowels are pronounced. So which one is right? "I" as in "hit", or "I" like "ee".

[Javizy]

It's ganbatte, the te form of ganbaru (try your best, good luck), you'll hear this a lot. You may have heard Takeshi's castle contestants say 'ganbarimasu!' at the start of a challenge. Don't worry about the different verb forms until you get to them though.

The 'ne' (a sentence ending particle) in this case means 'okay?' or something along those lines, you'll hear this used way too much, especially by women. It doesn't really have an English equivalent most of the time, but it's covered repeatedly in a lot of lessons on here, so don't worry about it if you haven't done it yet.

It's 'i' as in 'hit', all Japanese vowels on their own are short and sharp. To get the 'E' sound like in 'sheep' you'd need a double vowel like 'ii', like in a lot of 'i' adjectives, such as oishii (delicious), bakabakshii (foolish), or ii itself (good, okay, alright; short for yoi).

Japanese syllables are determined by a length of time, rather than a sound like with English. Where ii would be one syllable in English, it is considered to be two syllables in Japanese because you have to do double the length of the 'i' sound. That's why the little tsu you started this thread about is considered a syllable even though it is just a slight pause. Oishii, for example, is made up of four syllables お, い, し, and い.

[WalterWills]

Brilliant! With you around, I'll be fluent in no time!