Japanese Writing & Pronunciation Guide

Japanese Writing & Pronunciation Guide
by ~Anonymous~

--- Introduction: Kanji & Kana ---
Kanji are characters loaned from Chinese, and for the most part are either ideograms (symbols which represent ideas) or pictograms (symbols which pictorially resemble the thing they represent). There are around 3,000 Kanji in at least somewhat common use and Japanese people are expected to have learned a list of 2,136 of them, referred to as the Jōyō list, by the time they finish compulsory education at age 14 or 15. Most Kanji have at least two different pronunciations: the Onyomi, derived from the original Chinese reading, and the Kunyomi, derived from native Japanese words which the Kanji was adopted to write. In many cases, not satisfied with simply loaning one reading for each character from Chinese, the Japanese opted to loan additional Onyomi from different parts of China and at different point in its history, the result of which is that a lot of Kanji today have multiple Onyomi readings. Also, because any given character could be adopted to write multiple different native Japanese words, many characters also have multiple Kunyomi readings. There are some Kanji which only have a single Onyomi or Kunyomi reading, but these are the exception rather than the rule; Most Kanji have an Onyomi and a Kunyomi reading, and many have multiple of each.

Japanese doesn't just have one writing system though, it has three, with Kanji making up one and Hiragana and Katakana, collectively referred to as Kana, making up the other two. Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic scripts which represent the exact same set of sounds, but are used for different purposes; Hiragana is primarily used for grammatical features such as writing particles and the Kana part of Kanji+Kana words (e.g. the む in 読む) to allow for agglutination, and also for writing words with uncommon Kanji and/or Kanji which the audience is not expected to know (e.g. because they are too young), while Katakana is primarily used for writing words loaned from languages besides Chinese, especially Western ones such as English, and also for the writing of many animal names. Katakana can also be used for emphasis like italics, and to represent strange styles of speech such as foreign accents. Hiragana and Katakana are categorised as syllabaries, and because this you'll often hear it said that each Kana character represents one syllable, but to be more accurate they represent morae.

--- Pronunciation Basics & Hiragana ---
First off, the vowels. There are five Kana used for writing vowels in Japanese, and unlike in English where "a" can represent anything from the "ah" in "palm" or the "ay" in "face",  the vowel sounds represented by the Kana in Japanese never change; They are always the same. With that out of the way, let's take a look at these vowel sounds as written in Hiragana:
あ - Romanised as "a", pronounced like the "a" in "cap".
い - Romanised as "i", pronounced like the "ee" in "feet".
う - Romanised as "u", pronounced like the "oo" in "boot".
え - Romanised as "e", pronounced like the "e" in "bet".
お - Romanised as "o", pronounced like the "o" in "story".

Nothing especially tricky here. Moving on to the consonants...
K - Pronounced like the "k" in "kiss".
S - Pronounced like the "s" in "soup" (there is also a SH consonant on this row, pronounced like the "sh" in "sheep").
T - Pronounced like the "t" in "tick" (there is also a CH consonant on this row, pronounced like the "tch" in "itchy", and a TS consonant pronounced like the "ts" in "cats").
N - Pronounced like the "n" in "not".
H - Pronounced like the "h" in "hat" (there is also an F consonant on this row, pronounced somewhere between an English "f" and "h" sound, similar to, though not the same as, the "f" in "feet").
M - Pronounced like the "m" in "much".
Y - Pronounced like the "y" in "yacht".
R - This sound doesn't exist in English, but is somewhere between an English "d" and "l" sound, and very close to the kind of "r" used in Romance languages like Spanish. The closest equivalent we have in English would probably be the way Americans say the "t" in words like "better" or "party".
W - Pronounced like the "w" in "was".
G - Pronounced like the "g" in "goat" (some speakers pronounce this in a very nasally way which sounds almost like "ng" rather than "g").
Z - Pronounced like the "z" in "zoo" (there is also a J consonant on this row, pronounced like the "j" in "jeep", or in some cases like the "si" in "vision").
D - Pronounced like the "d" in "doctor".
B - Pronounced like the "b" in "bug".
P - Pronounced like the "p" in "pack".

You'll notice I didn't start any of the lines for the consonants with Kana characters, and there's a good reason for that - (With the exception of "n") It's impossible to write consonants on their own in Japanese; They all come with an attached vowel sound. Let's take a look:
K - か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko)
S - さ (sa), し (shi), す (su), せ (se), そ (so)
T - た (ta), ち (chi), つ (tsu), て (te), と (to)
N - な (na), に (ni), ぬ (nu), ね (ne), の (no), ん (n)*
H - は (ha)*, ひ (hi), ふ (fu), へ (he)**, ほ (ho)
M - ま (ma), み (mi), む (mu), め (me), も (mo)
Y - や (ya), ゆ (yu), よ (yo)
R - ら (ra), り (ri), る (ru), れ (re), ろ (ro)
W - わ (wa), を (wo)***

* In the Gojūon ordering of Kana, ん (n) actually belongs at the bottom of the list separate from all the others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gojūon

The rest of the consonant characters are formed by adding diacritic marks known as "dakuten" (゛) and "handakuten" (゜) to other Kana, indicating that the sound has changed from being unvoiced to voiced or semi-voiced respectively:
G - が (ga), ぎ (gi), ぐ (gu), げ (ge), ご (go)
Z - ざ (za), じ (ji), ず (zu), ぜ (ze), ぞ (zo)
D - だ (da), ぢ (ji)****, づ (zu)****,  で (de), ど (do)
B - ば (ba), び (bi), ぶ (bu), べ (be), ぼ (bo)
P - ぱ (pa), ぴ (pi), ぷ (pu), ぺ (pe), ぽ (po)

* Pronounced the same as わ (wa) when used as a grammatical particle.
** Pronounced the same as え (e) when used as a grammatical particle.
*** Pronounced the same as お (o) when used as a grammatical particle (the only time it is ever used in modern standard Japanese), though in song lyrics it often becomes "wo" (https://youtu.be/cZ7zQbMxm28?t=8).
**** ぢ and づ sound exactly the same as じ and ず respectively in modern standard Japanese. In some rural dialects though, じ, ぢ, ず and づ may all sound different, while in others they may all sound exactly the same. These 4 Kana are known as the "yotsugana".

You might be thinking we're done now, but there's still a few things left to cover. First up, the small Kana:
っ - This is a smaller version of the character つ (tsu) used to represent a glottal stop (in American English, a glottal stop can be heard for instance in the utterance "uh-oh" between "uh" and "oh"; Glottal stops are much more prevalent in British English, in certain Northern English dialects replacing the article "the", and more commonly throughout the UK appearing in the middle of words like "better", "letter", "button", etc. in place of the "tt"). It is Romanised by doubling the consonant it precedes (e.g. がっこう → gakkou).
ゃ, ゅ, ょ - These are smaller versions of the characters や (ya), ゆ (yu) and よ (yo) used to represent the palatalisation of the preceding consonant with the addition of an あ, う or お vowel sound respectively. In plain terms, びゅ for instance, creates a sound very similar to the beginning of the English word "beauty", ぎゅ a sound very similar to what can be heard in the middle of the word "argue", きゅ is like the middle of "skew", みゅ as in "mute", ひゅ as in "hue", ぴゅ as in "spew", etcetera. The small ゃ, ゅ and ょ, you might have already noticed, always attach to the consonant+"i" sound characters (び, ぎ, き, み, ひ, ぴ, and so on) - It is important to note that the "i" sound from these characters is not pronounced when they are followed by the small ゃ, ゅ and ょ (e.g. きょく is NOT "Ki-Yo-Ku", but "Kyo-Ku"). See the following Wikipedia article for a complete list of all the possible combinations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yōon

Next, long vowels. Pretty simple, really:
ああ (aa) - あ, but twice as long. Romanised as "ā".
いい (ii) - い, but twice as long. Romanised as "ī".
うう (uu) - You'll see this combination used in the spelling some words, but it doesn't indicate a long う, it's actually two separate う sounds which come one after the other (e.g. 憂鬱 (ゆううつ) is "yuu・utsu", not "yuuu・tsu"). Romanised as "ū".
えい (ei) = え, but twice as long. This is the common way of writing this sound. Romanised as "ē".
ええ (ee) = え, but twice as long. Pretty much never used except in the word 「ええ」, a very casual way of saying "yes". Romanised as "ē".
おう (ou) = お, but twice as long. This is the common way of writing this sound. Romanised as "ō".
おお (oo) = お, but twice as long. This way of writing a long お is rarely seen except as a reading for 大 and 多 (and since these Kanji are so simple and common, they're almost never replaced by Hiragana except for the sake of people who know literally 0 Kanji). Romanised as "ō".

Long vowels can also be created by following a consonant+vowel character with a vowel character, e.g. おかあさん (okāsan), "mother".

Lastly, we have to cover what happens when ん (n) is followed by a vowel, or by や, ゆ or よ. While you may be thinking that ん+あ would become な (na), ん+い would become に (ni), etc., this is not the case. Instead, the vowel sound following ん remains separate from it and becomes very nasally; The exact sound created here varies from speaker to speaker, but it often ends up sounding something like y+[vowel] (e.g. "ye" for the え (e) in んえ). In the case of や, ゆ and よ, it's basically the same story - しんゆう is NOT shi-nyuu but shin-yuu. In Romanisation, this is usually represented with an apostrophe ('), e.g. きんえん → kin'en.

Actually, one more thing - The infamous 「あ゛」. "What on Earth is this supposed to be?", many wonder. Well, the answer is that it's simply an あ (a) but pronounced in a very rough way, for instance as in a shout or a scream. This can also be done with other Kana which aren't supposed to have dakuten in order to represent the same thing, and of course sometimes words are deliberately spelled incorrectly by replacing, for instance, た (ta) with だ (da), in order to represent the ragged pronunciation of the word by whoever is saying it (another way of deliberately misspelling words to this effect is to replace the だ (da), etc. sounds with ら (ra), etc. - だめ (dame) → らめ).

And that's it... for Hiragana.


--- Katakana ---
I'm not going to bother typing the full list of them out here. You can check Wikipedia for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#Table_of_katakana

Instead, I'll just cover some of the differences between Hiragana and Katakana, starting with the long vowel sounds which we covered in Hiragana just above.
With Katakana, indicating a long vowel sound is really simple. You just append ー (not to be confused with 一, the Kanji for "one") to any Kana:
ギター (gitā) - "guitar"
イージー (ījī) - "easy"
ニュース (nyūsu) - "news"
メートル (mētoru) - "metre"
オーケー (ōkē) - "okay"

You can even use it with ン (n) to make 「ンー」 ("hmm", "umm", "erm"). By the way, it's not uncommon to see ー appended to Hiragana as well, even though it's technically wrong. You'll also sometimes see a small vowel used to represent a long vowel sound in both Katakana and Hiragana, for example ハ (ha) + ァ (a) = ハァ (hā), the sound of someone sighing. It's even possible to put the two together like ハァーハァー, the sound of someone exhaling heavily.

Another difference is the fact that there are a bunch of additional sounds which we can write with Katakana (technically they can be written in Hiragana too, but it's not standard to do so). Hopefully you remember the character 「ふ」 from earlier and the fact that it's pronounced with a "f" ("fu") unlike the other characters on the H consonant row. Well, we can take the Katakana version of this character, 「フ」, and append a small vowel to it to create additional F+[vowel] sounds: ファ (fa), フィ (fi), フェ (fe) and フォ (fo). These sounds aren't used in native Japanese words, they were added solely for the sake of more accurately representing the original pronunciation of words loaned from other languages (e.g. 「ファイト」 (faito), "fight", would otherwise have to be loaned as 「ハイト」 (haito). Unfortunately, some words, such as コーヒー (kōhī), "coffee", were loaned before these new Katakana were invented so they have "h" sounds where in their original language they would have a "f" sound).

Some more new Katakana sounds:
イェ (i + small e) - Represents a "ye" sound.
ウィ (u + small i) - Represents a "wi" sound.
ウェ (u + small e) - Represents a "we" sound.
ウォ (u + small o) - Represents a "wo" sound.
ヴ - Represents a "vu" sound. Can be combined with small vowels like so: ヴァ (va), ヴィ (vi), ヴェ (ve), ヴォ (vo). Before this Katakana character was invented, "v" sounds were represented with バ (ba), ビ (bi), ブ (bu), ベ (be) and ボ (bo) instead (e.g. ビデオ (bideo), "video"), and most Japanese people will read ヴ, etc. as "bu", etc. anyway because the "v" sound doesn't exist in native Japanese and they struggle to pronounce it. There is also a Hiragana equivalent, ゔ, but it's virtually never used.
ティ (te + small i) - Represents a "ti" sound.
ディ (de + small i) - Represents a "di" sound.
チェ (chi + small e) - Represents a "che" sound.

That's basically all the useful ones. You can find a full list of possibilities on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization#Extended_katakana


--- Obsolete Kana ---
ゐ (Hiragana)・ヰ (Katakana) - Romanised as "wi", but actually pronounced the same as い (i). These characters are no longer in use in modern standard Japanese and you are unlikely to ever come across them outside of the name of a certain Touhou character (てゐ (tewi), pronounced "tei").
ゑ (Hiragana)・ヱ (Katakana) - Romanised as "we", but actually pronounced the same as え (e). These characters are no longer in use in modern standard Japanese. There is also an obsolete "ye" sound which, like "we", today sounds the same as え (e) - "ye" is so old and obsolete, however, that it doesn't even have a Kana associated with it, but notably shows up in the name of a certain Japanese beer brand, "Yebisu" (pronounced "ebisu", and interestingly written in Katakana as "ヱビス" - "webisu").
ヲ - Katakana version of を (wo). The only time you will ever see this if it someone decides to write an entire sentence in Katakana for some reason (e.g. 「スシヲタベタ。」 instead of 「寿司を食べた。」) - This might be done in the case of fictional works to represent the speech of a foreigner, robot, alien, or any other entity with a strange accent or style of speech.


--- Vowel Dropping ---
Sometimes the vowels associated with certain Kana drop, for instance the "i" in し (shi) in the word しか (pronounced "shka"). There's no real way to predict when this is going to happen so you just have to learn it on a case by case basis.


--- Punctuation ---
There are no spaces in Japanese writing, however that isn't to say that there's no punctuation.
。 - A full stop.
、 - A comma.
「」 - Speech marks.
？ - You guessed it, a question mark.
！ - No prizes for this one either. An exclamation mark.


--- More on Kanji ---
To finish up, let's go into a little more detail on Kanji. First thing to mention is that, contrary to how Kanji may look to you right now, they are not just a bunch of random squiggles. Kanji are actually built up from smaller elements called "radicals", of which there are 214 defined, though many of these have variant forms. An example:
仔 is written with the radicals 亻 (a variant of 人) and 子. 人 and 子 can actually function as Kanji on their own, though 人's variant 亻 cannot.

In Chinese, characters usually a contain a radical indicating the character's meaning and another indicating its reading, but this doesn't really carry over into Japanese unfortunately because, as previously mentioned, the majority of characters have several different readings, and on top of that several different meanings, and there's no way to know for sure which reading or meaning is being used unless you already know the word. In short, trying to memorise readings of Kanji on their own is a completely fruitless and meaningless endeavour; It doesn't matter if you know all the possible ways of reading a Kanji - If you don't know the word it's being used to write, you still won't be able to read it. The only sensible approach to learning Kanji, therefore, is to learn them via vocabulary.

If the above has you wanting to tear your hair out, here's another bit of information to cheer you up - Some words completely ignore either the reading(s) or the meaning(s) of their Kanji. These words are referred to as "ateji". An example of the former case is the word 今日 (kyō), meaning "today" - 今 = now, the present, etc., while 日 = day, sun, etc., which is all well and good, but this "kyō" pronunciation has absolutely nothing to do with either of these characters' readings; The Kanji here are purely being used for their meanings. An example of the latter case would be 素敵 (suteki), meaning "wonderful" - 素 = plain, while 敵 = enemy, opponent. As you can see, these characters' meanings have nothing to do with the meaning of the word and they are only being used because they happen to carry the す (su) and てき (teki) readings needed to write this word in Kanji.

Some more fun with readings: Sometimes the first Kanji in a compound word will lose the final part of its reading and create a doubled consonant together with the initial consonant sound of the second Kanji in the compound. Some examples:
学校 - The initial Kanji in this compound should be read as がく (as in words like 学力 (gakuryoku), 学園 (gakuen), etc.), with the second Kanji being read as こう (as in words like 高校 (kōkō), 校長 (kōchō), etc.), creating がくこう (gakukō)... except that doesn't happen here. Instead, the く (ku) from がく (gaku) is lost we get がっこう (gakkō).
雑誌 - 雑 should be read as ざつ (zatsu) and 誌 as し (shi), creating ざつし (zatsushi), but instead つ is lost and we get ざっし (zasshi).
日記 - 日 should be read as にち (nichi) and 記 as き (ki), creating にちき (nichiki), but instead ち is lost and we get にっき (nikki).

There's no way to know when this is going to happen so you just have to learn it on a case by case basis.

Another thing that happens often in compounds is that the initial consonant of the second Kanji in the compound will become voiced or semi-voiced. Some examples:
天国 (tengoku) - The こく (koku) reading seen in words like 国民 (kokumin) and 国語 (kokugo) has changed to ごく (goku).
花火 (hanabi) - The ひ (hi) reading normally associated with 火 has become び.
鉛筆 (enpitsu) - The ひつ reading normally associated with 筆 has become ぴつ.

Lastly, a quick bit about when Onyomi and Kunyomi readings are used. If you see a word which is written with Kanji+Kana, like 座る or 眩しい, you can be 100% confident that you are dealing with a Kunyomi reading. If you see a Kanji+Kanji word like 先生, on the other hand, you're probably dealing with an Onyomi reading, but there are many exceptions where these Kanji compounds can be read as Onyomi+Kunyomi, Kunyomi+Onyomi, or even Kunyomi+Kunyomi instead, so the "Kanji Compounds = Onyomi" rule can't be relied upon. If you see a Kanji on its own like 赤, you're probably dealing with a Kunyomi reading, but again there are many exceptions so the "Single Kanji = Kunyomi" rule can't be relied upon either. There's really no point in trying to memorise any of this though because, as I've said several times up to now, many Kanji have multiple Onyomi and/or Kunyomi readings, so even if you know for sure that you're dealing with an Onyomi or Kunyomi, it's still not going to help you most of the time because you won't know WHICH Onyomi or Kunyomi is being used unless you know the word.

And I think that about does it for the essentials. If you want to know even more about Kanji, check Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji


--- Typing ---
Check Google for instructions on how to enable Japanese input on your OS. On Linux, it involves the installation of an IMF + IME (e.g. fcitx-mozc). On Windows, there should be a built in functionality for it. On Mac, I have no idea.

Anyway, once you've figured out how to turn Japanese input on, here's the basics (and I do mean basics) of using it:
First off, and this is the most important thing of all - Do NOT use Hepburn romanisation when typing Japanese. For one thing, it's slow, and for another you simply can't even type certain characters with it, so it's useless. Instead, you want to use Nihon-shiki romanisation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon-shiki_romanization#Nipponsiki%E2%80%94ISO_3602_Strict

With that out of the way, the general principle by which Japanese input works is that you type a word out using Romaji (e.g. for よる, type "yoru"), then if you want to turn that into Kanji or anything else, you hit the space bar and keep hitting it until you get what you want, then you hit enter. If you've typed multiple words out, it's basically the same - hit space when you're done typing to begin converting, but instead of pressing enter after you've converted the first word, you press the right arrow key on your keyboard to move onto the next word and then hit space to begin the conversion process with that word as well if necessary.

To type ん, enter "nn".