Despite what you might think, reading and writing Japanese (at least when it comes to kana) is actually really easy. It’s not like English at all (which is tough) and things are generally written the way they sound, and sound the way they are written (though, of course, there are some exceptions). To illustrate this point, we’re going to look at some words you already know, the first of which is of course “sushi.” The word “sushi” consists of two separate kana: SU + SHI. Take a look at your hiragana chart and see if you can find the kana for both of these (su & shi). Just for the sake of letting things sink in, go ahead and copy the characters “su” and “shi” in order to write the word “sushi” out. This image is taken from the hiragana chart we’re using, and I’ve circled the correct characters. Now, on the sheet they aren’t in the correct order, but when you write out す (su) and し (shi) together, you get すし (sushi). Writing in hiragana really is that simple.

Now, unfortunately, there is a kanji for this word as well (寿司 = すし = sushi), but you don’t need to worry about that at all right now. We’re focusing on hiragana for the time being.What else can you spell? 170 Photos and videosViewing Tweets won't unblock @KatakanaSushi.Learning Japanese is a pretty daunting task. I’m really terrible at learning languages. I have to work really hard at it while other people seem to just get it. I find that the best way for me to learn something is to teach it. So in this small Learning Japanese video series I’d like to share how it is that I am learning. I tend to use visual cues when learning, so this video features my terrible doodles. I’d love for us to share methods, tips, and tricks with each other so we can all help each other learn. Today’s video is Part 1/5 for Learning Katakana. Okay, I know some of you might be wondering why I’m starting with Katakana instead of Hiragana. First let me explain the difference between the two so everyone is on the same page.

When you’re learning Korean or English you memorize one alphabet and you’re done. Japanese, however, has two different alphabets: Hiragana for native Japanese words and Katakana for foreign words. Now throw in Kanji, a system of Japanese writing using Chinese characters, and you got a whole lot of work to do to really understand Japanese. sushi grade salmon for saleThe good news is both Hiragana and Katakana sound exactly the same, they are the same alphabet BUT they use different looking letters so that you can differentiate them.where to buy eel san jose I initially started my Japanese learning by memorizing Hiragana because I figured that would be the most common alphabet being used in Japan…but I was totally wrong. youda sushi chef full online

Turns out Katakana is everywhere and it doesn’t just describe foreign words anymore. I see Katakana being used to describe things that have Japanese words, for example 鮭 is the Kanji for salmon which is pronounced as “sa-ke” but I always see Katakana being used for salmon which looks like サーモン and is pronounced as “sa-mon”. yo sushi dubai mirdif city centreEven at a sushi restaurant I see a combination of Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana being used. sushi grade tuna shelf lifeIt seems like when it comes to menus, Katakana is the major go to alphabet.sushi grade tuna boston Now, POP QUIZ HOT SHOT!!! best sushi london zuma

Can you guess what these fruits are? They are written in Katakana but I’ve written the English pronunciation beside them so you can get an idea of how English words sound in Japanese. Pretty similar to their English pronunciation. But here lies the problem: if you order a glass of orange juice using straight up English the server may not understand you. Many Japanese people have learned these words only in their Katakana form, so your English pronunciation may not make sense. They know that “o-ren-ji” = orange, but they don’t know the English pronunciation for it. So that means you really have to learn the correct Japanese pronunciation (of English words) if you want to be clearly understood…but that also means struggling with forgetting your native understanding what these words are supposed to sound like. That was a huge problem I had in Korea specifically with the word Canada. In Korean, it is pronounced “KAY-NA-DA” but I would always say “CAN-NA-DA” since that’s how you actually say it, but people would not understand what country I was from.

Though barely different in sound, many people could not connect that KAYNADA was also CANADA. This struggle of English words being turned into Korean or Japanese words is huge problem for those of us that have ever taught English as a foreign language, since students will fall back on their Native understanding of the word as the correct way to say it but in reality many Korean/Japanese English words are not understandable by actual English speakers. If you haven’t seen it already, I’m linking to the part where we struggle to understand what English words are being used in the Katakana Challenge for our EYS Episode 3. So that’s it for now! What did you think about my crazy doodles? That Sailor Moon…so bad…Did you have any other pictures that helped you to learn these letters? Please share your tips with me below! In modern Japanese, ateji (当て字, 宛字 or あてじ?, "called upon characters") principally refer to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters.

This is similar to man'yōgana in Old Japanese. Conversely ateji also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings. For example, the word sushi is often written with the ateji 寿司. Though the two characters have the readings su and shi respectively, the character 寿 means "one's natural life span" and 司 means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. Ateji as a means of representing loanwords has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of katakana (see also Transcription into Japanese), although many ateji coined in earlier eras still linger on. Ateji today are used conventionally for certain words, such as 寿司 (sushi), though these words may be written in hiragana (especially for native words), or katakana (especially for borrowed words), with preference depending on the particular word, context, and choice of the writer. Ateji are particularly common on traditional store signs and menus. For example, kōhī, the Japanese loanword for "coffee", is generally written using the katakana コーヒー, but on coffee shop signs and menus, it is often written with the ateji 珈琲.

Many characters have gained meanings derived from ateji usage. For example, ateji was once widely utilized for foreign place names; such as in the ateji ajia (亜細亜?) used to write "Asia". The original ateji word is now considered archaic, but the character 亜 has gained the meaning "Asia" in such compounds as tōa (東亜?, East Asia), even though 亜 originally meant "subsequent" (and continues to). From the ateji amerika (亜米利加?, America), the second character was taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage beikoku (米国?), which literally translates to "rice country" but means "United States of America". When using ateji to represent loanwords, the kanji are sometimes chosen for both their semantic and phonetic values, a form of phono-semantic matching. A stock example is 倶楽部 (kurabu) for "club", where the characters can be interpreted loosely in sequence as "together", "fun" and "place". Another example is 合羽 (kappa) for the Portuguese capa, a kind of raincoat.

The characters can mean "wings coming together", as the pointed capa resembles a bird with wings folded together. The ad hoc usage of Chinese characters for their phonetic values dates nearly to the introduction of Chinese characters to Japan. Two widespread uses of ateji came out of this. On one front, scholars and monks used kanji characters as translation aids between the lines of Chinese texts. On the other, poets simply used kanji phonetically to write in Japanese. Many different characters were used with the same sound values. This system of characters is called 万葉仮名 man'yōgana (alphabet of myriad leaves). The kana of modern Japanese (hiragana and katakana) developed as organic simplifications of man'yōgana that were eventually codified. Ateji are primarily used today for historical terms – in historical order, these are primarily Sanskrit terms dating from the introduction of Buddhism to Japan, Portuguese terms from the 16th and 17th centuries, and Dutch terms from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries – see Japanese words of Portuguese origin and Japanese words of Dutch origin.

Ateji found some use in the Meiji era and in the 20th century, but has largely been superseded by katakana. In Buddhist Japanese, Sanskrit terms used in some chants also derive from ateji but were not called such. These Buddhist texts were translated into Chinese (in a Literary Chinese style) in China long ago. The translation rule for mantras were not to translate the mantra, but instead to represent it phonetically with Chinese characters. For the sutras, they were translated into Chinese Literary Language (Wenyan). The terms prajñāpāramitā (般若波羅蜜多 hannya-haramita?) and samyaksaṃ-bodhi (三藐三菩提 sanmyakusanbodai?), or "Perfection of Wisdom" and "Fully Enlightened", both appear in the Heart Sutra, but are written using ateji. 訓読み kun-yomi (Japanese-origin reading) should not be confused with ateji. Whereas ateji are characters used to represent Japanese/borrowed words without regard to the meaning of those characters; kun'yomi are readings, typically words, of Japanese origin that have been officially applied to the borrowed Chinese characters.

(This can be related to Latin-Germanic origin synonyms in English.) When a native Japanese word is written as a compound by meaning only, and this spelling is established in the language, as in otona (大人?, adult), the word is the semantic variety of ateji, and is known specifically as 熟字訓 (jukujikun 'established meaning-spellings'). Intentional improvised use of irregular kanji spellings (as opposed to spelling mistakes) is known as 義訓 gikun, and generally requires furigana (notational reading characters) to be read properly. Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) may have started out as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings). A loanword example is reading 宿敵 shukuteki 'mortal enemy' as the English-derived word raibaru 'rival'. While standardized ateji uses okurigana, as in 可愛い (kawai-i) having the 〜い so that it can inflect as 可愛かった (kawai-katta) for the past tense, gikun that is only intended for one-off usage need not have sufficient okurigana.

For example, 辛い kara-i, "spicy, salty" is an adjective and requires an 〜い, but it might be spelt for example as 花雷 ka-rai (both legitimate on readings of the characters) on a poster, for example, where there is no intention of inflecting this spelling. Most ateji are multi-character, but in rare cases they can be single-character, as in 缶 kan (simplification of 罐, for which kan is the Chinese pronunciation), used for "can, metal tin" (罐 originally means "metal pot, iron teakettle", so this is similar). This is classified as ateji. In some rare cases, an individual kanji has a loan word reading – that is, a character is given a new reading by borrowing a foreign word – though most often these words are written in katakana. The three most notable examples are pēji (頁、ページ?, page), zero (零、ゼロ?, zero), and dāsu (打、ダース?, dozen). botan (釦／鈕、ボタン?, from Portuguese botão (which means button)) and mētoru (米、メートル?, meter) are marginally understood or used in some settings, but most are obscure – see list of single character loan words for more.

These are classed as kun'yomi of a single character, because the character is being used for meaning only (without the Chinese pronunciation), rather than as ateji, which is the classification used when a loanword term is using existing sounds only (as in 天麩羅 'tempura'), or alternatively as a compound with meaning only (as in 煙草 – the sound タバコ cannot be broken down into readings of individual characters). In principle these could be considered as 1-character meaning-only ateji, but because the reading corresponds to a single character, these are considered readings instead. Note that while kun'yomi are generally written as hiragana when writing out the word in kana instead of kanji (because native Japanese), these gairaigo "kun'yomi" are generally written as katakana (because a foreign borrowing). See single character gairaigo for further discussion. Note that numerically, most of these characters are for units, particularly SI units, in many cases using new characters (kokuji) coined during the Meiji period, such as kiromētoru (粁、キロメートル?, kilometer, 米 "meter" + 千 "thousand"; this character is obscure and not in common use).

Some non-kanji symbols or Latin character abbreviations also have loanword readings, often quite long; a common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading パーセント, while the word "centimeter" is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space) and has the seven kana reading センチメートル (it can also be written as 糎, as with kilometer above, though this is very rare). Many borrowed measurement terms may be written as tiny abbreviations stuffed into a single character space called 環境依存文字 'space conserving characters': ㌢ senchi 'cm', ㌔ kiro 'kilo', etc. In a few cases, the etymology of a word is unclear, and hence whether the term is a borrowing or not cannot be determined. One such example is bira (片、枚、ビラ?, bill, flyer, leaflet), which may be from native Japanese hira (片、枚?) or びらびら (bira-bira?), or may be from English "bill"; it is currently frequently written in katakana, however.