WRITING
JAPANESE
HIRAGANA
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— 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. 2004105695
ISBN 978-4-8053-1349-7
ISBN 978-1-4629-1739-6 (ebook)
This edition first published, 2015
This title was first published in 1996 as Introduction to Written Japanese Hiragana.
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[email protected] www.tuttle.co.jp
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Preface
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. The basic function of hiragana is to supplement the kanji.
Generally, kanji are used to represent the ideas in a sentence while hiragana is used to represent the relationships between the ideas. For example, whereas the concept of ‘go’ would be written in kanji, hiragana would be suffixed to the kanji to indicate “want to go,” “went,” “will not go,” and so forth. Hiragana is also used for particles such as “to,” “in,” “by” and “at.”
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 hiragana, 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 hiragana at first, then to substitute kanji into their writing as each character is learned.
Japanese schoolchildren learn their characters by writing them out, and this is generally acknowledged as the fastest way to master them.
This book has been prepared so that students at the introductory level of Japanese can become acquainted with the written component of the language in the quickest possible way. The overriding priority has been given
