I remember being taught that 方かな characters are taken from 漢字 elements, which is obvious in most cases and some are of course entire 漢字. ひらがな on the other hand are cursive, simplified versions of whole 漢字, developed, as I understand it, by Japanese women. It's the latter I'm interested in, does anyone know of a site with a chart giving the 漢字 upon which each ひらがな character is based?

I know only a few for sure, such as:
あ　安 [アン]
て　天 [テン]
ふ　不 [フ]

These also have the same sound, or initial syllable, as the 音読み [shown thus]; this is not always the case, however. The subject popped back into my head when I was writing 漢字 for review and wrote the primitive 田 particulary cursively, and it looked exactly like ゆ. I'd love to know if ゆ really is based on 田.

(Sorry about the possible excessive use of Japanese characters, I'm trying to get used to the dreaded Windows IME).

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/[kana]hiragana[/kana]

Thanks. I see ゆ is based on 由, 音読み ユ. I wasn't far off.

[ファブリス]

The english wikipedia page on hiragana also has a chart with [kana]kaisho, sousho[/kana] and [kana]hiragana[/kana].

Thanks みんな, I've no idea why I didn't think to look on Wiki!

Pangolin Wrote:I remember being taught that 方かな characters are taken from 漢字 elements

片仮名、片かな

JimmySeal Wrote:

Pangolin Wrote:I remember being taught that 方かな characters are taken from 漢字 elements

片仮名、片かな

Yes, I know, it was bloody Windows IME that popped that up without me noticing :mad:. I was trying to write it in hiragana, in fact; you'd think that would be easy enough, but no. I've given up on IME again, it's not worth the grief.

what do you plan to use instead of IME?

wrightak Wrote:what do you plan to use instead of IME?

I use JPWce and copy/paste. Maybe with time I might do better with IME, but right now I find my method less frustrating, and just as quick. I guess I just got used to it.

you mean that you use the input method provided with JWPce software? I find it appalling and always use windows IME instead when using JWPce. interesting.

wrightak Wrote:you mean that you use the input method provided with JWPce software? I find it appalling and always use windows IME instead when using JWPce. interesting.

You're right it is appalling, and now that I'm typing a lot more in Japanese, it just won't do. So, I've had another go with IME and I'm getting along with it a lot better. Knowing the keyboard shortcut that switches between direct and hiragana modes (Alt-~) helps a lot when you are writing stuff in a mixture English and Japanese. I couldn't get that to work until I realised "direct input" seems to use a USA layout keyboard mapping.

IIRC, the derivations are also in Heisig's book remembering the kana, which I recommend to anyone who hasn't mastered them yet. At least check it out from the library.

scottamus Wrote:IIRC, the derivations are also in Heisig's book remembering the kana, which I recommend to anyone who hasn't mastered them yet. At least check it out from the library.

There is also a very interesting table at the beginning of RTK2 (at least the edition I have seen) which discusses the relationship between kanji and kana showing some old forms of hiragana, which really demonstrate the extreme simplification of modern kana. It doesn't cover all of them, but it has some fascinating bits of information.

As for mastering the kana, I was surprised at how few people knew katakana in my Japanese class, which is pre-intermediate. It really does do to get these down early, you can't read much modern Japanese without knowing them (how annoying, for instance, that they use katakana for just about any animal beyond the common domestic ones! I really hate reading katakana.)

Pangolin Wrote:As for mastering the kana, I was surprised at how few people knew katakana in my Japanese class, which is pre-intermediate. It really does do to get these down early, you can't read much modern Japanese without knowing them (how annoying, for instance, that they use katakana for just about any animal beyond the common domestic ones! I really hate reading katakana.)

Katakana is like numbers: boring to learn from a book but one is exposed to it in such quantities in the real life in Toukyou that the issue really goes away.

Incidentally, this has been my one bit of advice to travellers to Japan who don't really want to learn the language but would like to pick up some useful knowlegde before the trip: spend a few days mastering katakana as there is a lot of 'katakana-ised' info coming to you every day in Japan and most of it is transliterated from some kind of English...