English equivalents given for a Japanese review word. This indicates that the Japanese word is a homophone, that is, a word having a different meaning but the same sound as another. Normally these homophones would be written with different characters, but when expressed in phonetic kana script or romanization such differentiation is not possible. The English words separated by a semicolon thus refer to different Japanese words sharing the same kana form. (Commas between English words simply indicate nuances of the same word.) It should also be noted that there is sometimes a subtle difference in intonation between “homophones,” which cannot be determined from the kana or romanization.
Finally, to assist readers with the correct pronunciation of the kana syllables, vocabulary words, and model sentences introduced in this book, a set of audio files recorded by a native Japanese speaker is available free of charge on the Tuttle website. For each page that is marked in the book with a headset symbol (
AN EXPLANATION OF KANA
The Function of Kana
Kana are purely phonetic symbols. That is, they are written representations of pronunciation. They can express the entire Japanese language in writing, though in practice the written language uses a mixture of kana and kanji (characters taken from Chinese).
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