On the hiragana and katakana learning section, it featurrs the characters, the words, and a way to… - Feed Post by lu11
On the hiragana and katakana learning section, it featurrs the characters, the words, and a way to hear them being pronounced, but it doesn't say what they all mean! So confused, help!
posted by lu11
Comments 6
they are kinda hard to see cause they are small and light grey but above the play button is the corresponding romanized letter. here is another site to help http://www.tofugu.com/guides/learn-hiragana/. hope this helps.
The hiragana and katakana don't "mean" anything. They are just characters used for sound only--for spelling out how the word is pronounced. Same as individual Latin alphabet letters don't mean anything in English.
There are no words in that section either... Other new users have been confused too and said similar things when looking at the kana lessons page (saying "but what do the characters mean"), and I've wondered for a long time why it is that people ask this?
I know there's a few REALLY good apps on the App Store, also when i learned the alphabet the app would use a sort of flash card system...
Okay, thanks guys. But what's with the chinese characters thing? Are there chinese characters in japanese?- Yes, the chinese characters are called Kanji. I know right now it would seem silly to have them, but as you may or may not know, there are no spaces in the japanese typing system, which makes it quite a chore to read a full text of hiragana :p ( and often confusing since a word written in hiragana can have many different meanings, the only way you'd know the meaning of said word would be either the context it's used in or if the hiragana was replaced with a kanji.
Kanji is pretty much a bunch of radicals (little pictures) put together to create a new meaning. It's actually really helpful because one 2 kanji that mean the same thing can pretty much completely change a sentence depending on which one is used o. o (I read somewhere like 2 years ago lol) - yea kanji was borrowed from china and adapted for japanese use which is why when you start learning kanji there are two types of readings onyoumi and kunyoumi one is used when you have multiple kanji side by side like chinese writing and the other is the japanese way of reading them. not trying to scare you about the kanji but thats what i learned.
