We now come to part three of our primary alphabet lesson for this japanese language course for beginners. Even though we’ve covered the distinct characters for Hiragana and Katakana, there are some other sounds left to be covered. So come on and join me for part three of this japanese language course. 

Voiced Consonants

The term voiced consonants means that a consonant sound requires a voice. How many of you could have figured that out without me telling you that? I thought so. You’re all so smart. Give yourself a gold star. More specifically, these are consonant sounds that require a throat vibration. Several consonant sounds in Hiragana and Katakana can easily be switched to the voiced counterpart by making two small dashes in the upper right of the character used. This mostly applies to “k”, “s”, “t”, and “h” consonant sounds. There is also a semi-voiced consonant sound “p”, which is formed by putting a circle instead of dashes in the upper right corner of the “h” characters. I would have assumed the letter “b” myself but then again I’m not the one who started the language. I’ll have to take that up with God for setting it all up at the tower of babel. But I digress. Here are some charts. 

Voiced Consonant Sounds Hiragana

Voiced Consonant Sounds Katakana

Y-vowel sounds

There are three Y-vowel sounds (「や」、「ゆ」、 and 「よ」)  all three of which can be preceded by a consonant. This is done by attaching a small, half-size version of the y-sounds to the consonant+i sounds as you can see in the table below.  It sounds convoluted but the below chart should help put it into perspective. 

Every small や、ゆ、and よ combination Hiragana

Every small や、ゆ、and よ combination Katakana

Hard Consonant Sounds

There is no individual letter in Japanese that ends in a consonant.  However there is a way to essentially create a double consonant and thus create a hard stop in the word.  This is done by inserting a small「つ」just behind the character you want to create the double consonant for.   Specifically for the following consonants:  “p, k, t, s” . 

For example, 「ひと」 (meaning “person”) would be read as “hi-to”. 「ひっと」 however carries the “t” consonant sound back and is pronounced “hit-to”. 

Here are some more examples. 

1. トラック (to-rak-ku) – truck
2. ざっし (zas-shi) – magazine
3. カップ (kap-pu) – cup

The Long Vowel Sound

Creating a long vowel sound is fairly simple.  There are three characters that can be added to a vowel to extend it’s duration (depending on the vowel in question).  Those three characters are: 「あ」、「い」、or 「う」.

For funsies, let’s extend the vowel「か」. We add 「あ」 to create 「かあ」. Ore we could do: 「き → きい」, 「く → くう」, 「け → けい」, 「こ → こう」, 「さ → さあ」 and so on. Why would we do this? Try saying 「か」 and 「あ」 separately. Then say them in succession as fast as you can. You’ll notice that it’s easier to drag out the vowel. 

There is a very important reason to make sure that, when extending a vowel sound, you extend it for it’s full duration. The reason for this is that many words that are almost identical, differ in meaning only when pronounced witht the proper extended vowel. For example, 「ここ」 means “here” while 「こうこう」 means “High school”. 

Here is a short list of example words with long vowel sounds. The long vowel sound is highlighted. 

1. がくせい (ga-ku-se) – student
2. せんせい (sen-se) – teacher
3. きょう (kyo) – today
4. おはよう (o-ha-yo) – good morning
5. おかあさん (o-ka-san) – mother

Occasionally you might need to extend the “e” vowel sound by adding 「え」, or an “o” vowel sound by adding 「お」. We’ll see example of these words in later sections. 

Katakana is much easier to extend a vowel sound. Just throw a 「ー」 at the end of the vowel and you’re done.

1. ツアー (tsu-a) – tour
2. メール (me-ru) – email
3. ケーキ (ke-ki) – cake

Additional Katakana Sounds

「ふ」 is the only “f” sound in Japanese. For example「ふとん」 (futon) or 「ふじ」 (Fuji). That’s fine in Japanese because there are no words with other “f” sounds such as “fa”, “fi”, or “fo”. However, it can be a pain when trying to change certain foreign words such as “fork” into Katakana. 

The solution that was devised was the use of small vowel sounds. Let’s use the word “fork” again as an example. The small 「ォ」 can be attached to 「フ」 to create 「フォ」 (fo). “Fork” then becomes ［フォーク」. There are other gaps that are filled with this technique. The “v” sounds are also shown by putting two dashes to the vowel sounds but since “v” is such a difficult sound for native speakers, this is rarely an issue. Time for another table (I know you’ve been waiting for another one)!

The following table illustrates these gap filling techniques in Katakana.

Additional Sounds using Katakana

1. ソファ (so-fa) – sofa
2. ウィンドウズ (win-do-u-zu) – Windows (as in MS Windows)
3. ウォッカ (wok-ka) – vodka
4. チェック (chek-ku) – check

Well that concludes my three part lesson on Japanese writing as far as Hiragana and Katakana are concerned. Kanji will be dealt with later but for now go over these three lessons and memorize as much as you can. Thank you for looking at my japanese language course and good luck!

If you’re looking for any additional resources, I recommend either Rocket Japanese or Nihongo Japanese Video Course. You can check out my reviews page by either clicking here or by clicking on the Reviews tab at the top of the page.

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