Now we get to an interesting part of the Sounds of Japanese. Well actually, it’s all been interesting, but this part is something unique. I’m talking about silent and semi-silent vowels in Japanese. The official name for the phenomenon is … Read more
Today we are going to cover a very important part of Japanese phonetics that is represented by a special character. It’s not a new kana, you’ve seen it before, just not quite like this. The reason is because it is … Read more
As you learned in the beginning of this course, the Japanese language only has five vowels. But if that’s true, then what the heck are “long vowels” in Japanese? Well, since there are such a small number of different vowels … Read more
Now that you have officially completed Part One of this course, I thought it would be appropriate to provide you with a list of all the individual sounds of Japanese, all in one place. Feel free to bookmark this page … Read more
We’re now at the final section of hiragana characters and the individual sounds that they represent. In this lesson you will learn what the combination sounds in Japanese are and how to form them. This part gets interesting as we … Read more