WRITING
JAPANESE
KATAKANA
An Introductory Japanese Language Workbook
JIM GLEESON
TUTTLE Publishing
Tokyo |Rutland, Vermont| Singapore
The Tuttle Story: “Books to Span the East and West”
Many people are surprised to learn that the world’s leading publisher of books on Asia had humble beginnings in the tiny American state of Vermont. The company’s founder, Charles E. Tuttle, belonged to a New England family steeped in publishing.
Immediately after WWII, Tuttle served in Tokyo under General Douglas MacArthur and was tasked with reviving the Japanese publishing industry. He later founded the Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Company, which thrives today as one of the world’s leading independent publishers.
Though a westerner, Tuttle was hugely instrumental in bringing a knowledge of Japan and Asia to a world hungry for information about the East. By the time of his death in 1993, Tuttle had published over 6,000 books on Asian culture, history and art—a legacy honored by the Japanese emperor with the “Order of the Sacred Treasure,” the highest tribute Japan can bestow upon a non-Japanese.
With a backlist of 1,500 titles, Tuttle Publishing is more active today than at any time in its past— still inspired by Charles Tuttle’s core mission to publish fine books to span the East and West and provide a greater understanding of each.
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
Text © 1996, 2015 Jim Gleeson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
LCC Card No. 2004111447
ISBN 978-4-8053-1350-3 ISBN 978-1-4629-1740-2 (ebook)
This edition first published, 2015
This title was first published in 1996 as Introduction to Written Japanese Katakana.
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Preface
ハジメ ニ
It is widely accepted that students of Japanese progress more quickly if they learn the written component of the language at an early stage of their studies. Unfortunately, many students are daunted by the task of learning a large number of seemingly complex characters.
The complexity of Japanese characters, however, is something of an illusion, for many of the characters are merely combinations of comparatively few elements. This fact becomes apparent as one progresses through the two forty-eight character syllabaries, known collectively as kana, and the two thousand or so kanji characters that are used in written Japanese today.
Anybody who is able to master English, with its irregular spellings and idiosyncratic pronunciations, is more than equipped to master written Japanese.
The hiragana and katakana syllabaries are purely phonetic characters, which function much like the letters of the English alphabet. In this respect, kana are quite different from kanji characters, which are based on Chinese ideographs and which represent ideas.
The katakana syllabary is used primarily to represent borrowed words (from languages other than Chinese), although it is also used for botanical names and is sometimes used in place of hiragana or kanji for emphasis. In some ways, the use of katakana in Japanese parallels the use of italics in English. Onomatopoeic words and other expressive terms are also generally written in katakana, although hiragana can also be used.
As katakana is used to write foreign words that often contain sounds not found in Japanese, katakana has a number of apparent irregularities. Instead of providing a detailed description of the irregularities, this book adopts the approach of simply noting the irregularities as they occur and allowing the student to become familiar with the use of katakana through the numerous practice examples.
Each of the hiragana and katakana syllabaries represents all of the sounds in spoken Japanese. Unlike kanji, which can take on a variety of pronunciations according to their context, the pronunciation of the kana characters is quite regular. Although it is possible to write Japanese using only katakana, a native Japanese speaker would find it somewhat difficult to understand. Kanji are used for clarity, eloquence, and immediacy of meaning. It is customary for the student to write using only the kana at first, then to substitute kanji into their writing as the kanji are learned. Katakana, however, continues to be used when writing words of a foreign origin.
Japanese
