Chapter 1

The syntax

Syntaxin the Japanese language comes in several parts. From the lowest to
the highest, we see thekanaandkanji, used to compose words, which are
used to compose sentences, which in turn function as the building blocks
of the spoken and wriĴen language. We will look at each of these ”blocks”
in order, and look at how they all come together to form the Japanese lan-
guage.

1.1 The kana

1.1.1 The basics

What the alphabet is to western languages, the ”Japanese syllabary” is to
Japanese. A collection of 46syllables(roughly half of which have ’voiced’
counterparts) make up the collection of phonetic building blocks in the
Japanese language. Arranged in the traditional way, and read top-down,
right-to-left, these 46 syllables can be wriĴen in either of two scripts: hira-
gana and katakana:

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( )

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