Vocabulary (Review)

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Lesson Transcript

みなさんこんにちは。(Mina-san, konnichiwa) Hi everyone, I am Chihiro and welcome back to JapanesePod101.com’s Kantan kana. In the last lesson, we learned the katakana characters マ(ma), ミ(mi), ム(mu), メ(me) and モ(mo). Be sure to review the last lesson if you don’t get confident with these. We are almost done with katakana. Today we are going to cover ヤ(ya), ユ(yu) and ヨ(yo).
We will begin with ヤ(ya). 1, 2. It kind of looks like an angular version of Hiragana や(ya), doesn’t it? In the katakana version, there is no short stroke on the top. Here is タイヤ(taiya), “a tire” for your car and here is ヤム(yamu), “yam”.
Next up is ユ(yu). 1, 2. It looks like an angular alphabetical letter U turned down upside, doesn’t it? Here is ユニーク(yunīku), “unique” and here is ユーモア(yūmoa), “humor”, an important thing to have.
Okay our last character today is ヨ(yo) which looks like a backwards capital “E” which won’t help you remember it but this is actually a trick tip because now you will remember it as ヨ(yo) the backwards “E”. Now you can write ヨーヨー(yōyō) which you probably guessed is a yo-yo and ツナマヨ(tsunamayo) which is a contraction of the word to tuna and mayonnaise, a popular food combination Japan. That’s all in your katakana today but before you go, I like to talk about one more thing.
Remember in lesson 12 when I talked about combined vowels, adding a small ヤ(ya), ユ(yu) orヨ(yo) after any character in the イ(i) row creates a combination sound or as you might have guessed, it works for katakana as well. Now you can read ショートケーキ(shōtokēki) which means strawberry shortcake and アマチュア(amachua) which is “amateur.” These combined sounds are really useful if you are from ニューヨーク(Nyūyōku) or New York.
Now let’s have a short quiz. I will show you the katakana and you read it. Bonus points if you remember what it means.
タイヤ(taiya), “a tire”
ヨーヨー(yōyō), “yo-yo”
ユニーク(yunīku), “unique”
Now it’s time for Chihiro’s tip. Some Japanese words are written in katakana even though they are not foreign words. For example, the word オススメ(osusume) means recommended and it is written a lot on menus. Katakana is used in this case because it adds emphasis to the word. Try and spot them. You might see them from time to time.
Have you ever danced サルサ(sarusa) or ridden on メトロ(metoro)? you will learn how to write both “salsa” and “metro” in the next lesson. I will see you then.

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JapanesePod101.com
2010-11-26 18:30:00

みなさん、

Only 3 characters in this lesson - but they are important ones! Today we'll learn ヤ, ユ, and ヨ.

JapanesePod101.com
2024-04-11 09:49:11

Hello Tiffany,

A big thank you for your post and kind feedback!❤️

We're glad to have you with us! 👍

If you ever have any questions regarding your studies, please let us know.

Cheers,

Ali

Team JapanesePod101.com

Tiffany
2024-04-05 04:18:22

I love it when something connects. Thank you for these lessons!

JapanesePod101.com
2023-03-10 15:49:44

Hi Pablo Ignacio Scaletta,

Thank you for taking the time to leave us a comment.

There aren't really rules on which one to use, but novels are written vertically and if it's a manual or a textbook etc., they're written vertically😉

Looking forward to seeing you often here.

Cheers,

Ryoma

Team JapanesePod101.com

Pablo Ignacio Scaletta
2023-03-10 08:24:15

Konnichiwa!

In addition to Monica's doubt about vertical versus horizontal writing, what rules determine which layout will be used?

Greetings from Argentina

JapanesePod101.com
2020-06-05 14:14:54

Hi Monica (モニっちゃん),

Thank you for posting!

And I'm sorry I reply you so late.

1. Yes, in Japanese it's common to write vertically and horizontally. Originally we had only vertical writing modeled after Chinese, but started use horizontal writing as well about 120 years ago. Now newspapers and novels are usually vertical written.

2. The character "ー" is called prolonged sound and it always follows other character and make the sound longer. You will know the difference "ー" and "|", because it pulls the previous character's sound.

Thank you for studying with us:)

Sincerely,

Miho

Team JapanesePod101.com

JapanesePod101.com
2020-04-19 02:24:42

Hi Noah,

Thank you for the question!

Because it's not an extra.

ニューヨーク and ぬよく are pronounced differently.

Thank you for studying with us!

Sincerely,

Erica

Team JapanesePod101.com

Noah Reiman
2020-03-26 01:33:34

I was wondering why New York is spelled ニューヨーク and not ぬ よく. Why do you need the extra "yu" when you could just spell it nu-yo-ku?

Monica (モニっちゃん)
2020-01-25 02:54:16

Konnichiwa Japanesepod101 team.

I have a couple questions this time.

1. I've noticed that Chihiro write both vertically and horizontally (right to left). Are both commonly used, or is one style more commonly used than the other?

2. I've noticed the elongation letter in katakana is written as | when written vertically but as -- when written horizontally. Why is this? And why don't the other letters also rotate?

Arigato gozaimasu. I've been learning a lot.

JapanesePod101.com
2019-06-14 20:22:53

Hi there,

There are 4 types of accounts on JapanesePod101: Free Lifetime Account, Basic, Premium, and Premium PLUS.

When you sign up for JapanesePod101 for the first time, you have a 7-day Premium trial to check out the entire site. After those 7 days, you're a Free user, which means you have access to all our new lessons that we publish and the first 3 of every series.

It costs nothing to register and start listening to these lessons. You will only be charged if you'd like to upgrade and access more lessons and features.

Hope this helps!

Best Regards,

Cristiane

Team JapanesePod101.com

:)
2019-06-11 17:26:11

that's really dreadfu I can't buy it... lam jut14!!!where can I barrow money?:(

but... I love your teach style:)

konnichewa💜

JapanesePod101.com
2019-01-10 14:21:48

Hello Faye,

Thank you for the question.

Please check this series about Japanese pronunciation:

https://www.japanesepod101.com/lesson-library/ultimate-japanese-pronunciation-guide/

We hope it helps.

Let us know if you have any further questions.

Cheers,

Lena

Team JapanesePod101.com

Faye Valentine
2018-11-22 02:40:44

Hi i wonder how you can tell if you have to make a long vowel sound in a word? I mean when do you put a vowel sound?

Also, another question (sorry i ask a lot!), sometimes when a word has "su" or "shi" in it, i dont hear the sound of the vowel? Is it just pronounced fast that i dont catch the vowel sound or do you really omit the vowel sound?? I hope I made myself clear??

Thanks in advance!!

I love Chihiro by the way. She is the first teacher Ive seen here and I like her the most already! She looks very professional but doesnt look intimidating. Also her diction is great. I hope I see her more in other lessons.

JapanesePod101.com
2015-02-17 17:37:43

Farebury san,

Konnichiwa. :smile:

Yes, recommendation means “おすすめ”.

However, it’s written in hiragana or kanji.

Yuki 由紀

Team JapanesePod101.com

Farebury
2015-02-17 09:27:02

im just making sure i got this recommended is オススメ?

JapanesePod101.com
2014-03-10 14:09:00

Maymoona-san,

thank you for the suggestion!:smile:

I'll share your post and discuss about the possible new feature positively:innocent::thumbsup:

In meanwhile, please feel free to ask us some examples with certain kana

using this space:wink: We're happy to help you!

Natsuko (奈津子),

Team JapanesePod101.com

Maymoona
2014-03-10 01:30:13

ありがとございます、香織さん!

The words you add were very helpful. It would be nice if the creators of this website added a section contains like 50 or 100 words for each Kana .

Because two or three words is not enough , and whenever I try to look for a new words myself, I find kanji everywhere & can't read that word/ sentence :(...

JapanesePod101.com
2013-08-15 17:24:24

Sailor_sisters san,

Thank you for your comment.:heart:

"humor" sounds like "ヒューモア" for me, but we say "ユーモア" in Japanese.

And I also think humor is very important for everyone.:grin:

Rosalie san,

Do you wanna know more words with ヤ、ユ、ヨ?

For example, ケチャップ(ketchup)、ユーチューブ(YouTube)、ヨーグルト(yogurt)...like that.:grin:

zd san,

We use ya yu yo in romaji.:wink:

If you use ja ju jo in romaji, that would be ジャ、ジュ、ジョ.

Kaori(香織)

Team JapanesePod101.com

zd
2013-08-13 04:24:04

is it ja ju jo or ya yu yo?

sailor_sisters
2011-02-23 10:51:45

More information on what, Rosalie Nakamoto-san?

Rosalie Nakamoto
2010-12-26 02:47:08

Can you provide more information on this? cheers

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