Turning the Pages: A,E,I,O,U, style.

Alrighty, lets get started!

Ok, I hope you all took a minute to go over to thejapanesepage.com and look at some of the hiragana lessons. If not, no biggie, I probably wouldn't have and ended up doing the same thing your doing right now...staring at the text wondering how he's possibly going to get us to understand Japanese if we haven't learned the basic structure. So I'll write it down here to show you what I mean as well as enforce it for those that did visit the site. What I'm about to share with you all is so groundbreaking and revolutionary, it's gonna take the world by storm.The vowel A and the symbol A are paired, but there really is no symbolic connection between the two. Yet that is what languages are based on; symbols and sounds. In Japanese the vowel we would relate to A is actually written like this, あ (It is also written as ア but that's katakana and we'll work on that later). This vowel is pronounced like the a in father. Get more information and help on pronouncing this vowel here.

Next is the vowel, い. This vowel sounds like the ea in eat. The third vowel is う, and it sort of sounds like the u in dude but is pronounced with a staccato and is cut short. The fourth is え. This vowel is pronounced like the e in met. Like almost all the other vowels it follows the same soft staccato pronunciation. Lastly is お, spoken like oh.


So, in summary we learned about the Japanese vowels あ、い、う、え、お and what they sound like. But we never learned about these symbols 、。, these are the basic punctuation; 、is used as a comma and 。 could be likened to a period. Visit Wikipedia if you wish to learn more about Japanese punctuation (And yes, when used with discretion, like so many things that should be in life, Wikipedia is a fine resource).

English/Japanese vowels:
A/あ
I/い
U/う
E/え
O/お

(Yes I know most people sound out vowels in the A, E, I, O, U, order but for simplicity and correlation I did it this way.)

JWoTD:
Kanji:抱く
Hiragana:だく
Romaji:Daku
Click here for more information on the JWoTD

Next update I'll probably go over the K consonant formation.

じゃまた。

デボン