Characters
Two types:
- Kanji
- Kana Kana is made up of:
- Hiragana
- Katakana
Kana
For writing phonetic Japanese. There are 46 basic sounds that are based on 5 vowels combined with 9 consonants (k,s,t,n,h,m,y,r,w). Not all consonants go with all vowels.
k, s, t, h are 'voiceless' because they do not make a strong sound they go to:
k -> g s -> z t -> d h -> b
which combined with vowels make more sounds. This is Dakuten
b -> p
This is the handakuten.
Semi Vowels
Ya, yu, yo. Combined with the consonants.
Kanji
Uses Chinese characters that have become part of the Japanese writing system