Japanese Language, Food and Culture
| Katakana | Hiragana |
| Katakana is a syllabic alphabet. There are 46 different Katakana. It is no coincidence that there are the same number of characters in both the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets as they both represent exactly the same sounds (some of them even look quite similar). | Hiragana is also syllabic alphabet. In other words, each character represents a sound. There are 46 different characters each of which represent a different sound. Hiragana is used to represent native Japanese words. You will often see small Hiragana characters above or below Kanji to indicate how the Kanji should be pronounced. When used in this role, Hiragana are known as 'Furigana'. |
|
|
|
Links
http://www.japanese-online.com/
http://www.japanese-online.com/language/
http://members.aol.com/writejapan/
http://www.savergen.com/onldict/jap.html
http://www.thejapanesepage.com/
http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/
http://spectacle.berkeley.edu/~fiorillo/
http://www.bento.com/tf-recp.html - http://www.bento.com/tokyofood.html