ひらがな Pronunciation
There is a magical pattern to learning ひらがな pronunciation. Basically by learning the pronunciation of 5 仮名, (kana - 'character' in ひらがな 'alphabet') you will be able to pronounce most other things too.
Those 仮名 are the vowel sounds. They are also organized in a different order than were learned in 英語 (English language) and that is important. The order in 日本語 is A, I, U, E, O.
**Random observation/brain pick: I just made a little connection! :)
I noticed when comparing the kanji for 日本語 and 英語, the last 漢字 is the same. I initially interpreted that it would mean language, (I guess it still does in a way when using them in the traditional non-formal sense like Japanese and English) but low and behold the 漢字 for "language" itself is not the same. :/ Another let down is that with 日本語, the initial two 漢字 are plain and simply Japan (日本 - Nihon), but if you try to look up say England, the 漢字 still don't match up with 英語. Grrr.**
Oh 漢字, you are going to kick my ass. I just hope you don't scare me away like most other scholars. Did you know there is a 90% failure rate in learning 日本語?**
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. So you've got the five 仮名, the vowels. A, I, U, E, O or more accurately あ, い, う, え and お.
They are pronounced as follows:
あ - "ah" like in "car"
い - "i" like in "key"
う - "u" like in "moo"
え - "eh" like in "edge"
お - "oh" like in "joe"
I know these fairly well considering time spent elsewhere with 日本語 but will spend some time practicing since that's where I'm at with TextFugu right now. Anyway, I'm going to try to spend at least 30 minutes a day here in my cubby working on my study(ies). Ha! I spent too much time on my blog post tonight so I didn't make it very far but fortunately for me, that's kind of the point. It's going to be an interesting journey. :)
That's all for tonight folks.
またね!!
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