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| In Japanese the following three different forms of letters are used. | |
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| Hiragana | Hiragana is used to describe the intrinsic Japanse words. For instance the Japanse word that stand for English "book" is "Hon" , and it is depicted as shown in the right column. |
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| Katakana | Katakana had been developed to describe the imported words, mainly from European countries. "Hon" is not an imported word, however if it is written with Katakana,then.... | ホン | ||
| Kanji | Kanji is a semantic letter system. Namely, each single letter has it`s own meaning. The Kanji letter that is depicted in the right column means "book" and is read as "Hon". | |||
| Goldenrules for letter writing | ||||
Rule 1. From top to down. Rule 2. From left to right. Rule 3. Round part one stroke. |
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The Japanese alphabet and their pronounciation.. The Japanese alphabet consist of 46 letters. With the following video clip (Windows media player) you may learn the letters and the pronounciation of the Japanese alphabet. |
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| Part 1. | あ い う え を | Part 6. | は ひ ふ へ ほ | ||
| Part 2. | か き く け こ | Part 7. | ま み む め も | ||
| Part 3. | さ し す せ そ | Part 8. | や ゆ よ |
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| Part 4. | た ち つ て と | Part 9. | ら り る れ ろ | ||
| Part 5. | な に ぬ ね の | Part10. | わ ゐ え を ん | ||
