An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

16 CHAPTER 1. THE SYNTAX

Due to the fact that most loan words have come from some specific
language, many of which are not Enlgish, Japanese loan words may have
a different wriĴen form than expected. For instance, Brussels is wriĴen as
, ”buryusseru”, rather than , ”buraseruzu”, and
English (the people) is wriĴen as , ”igirisu”, rather than
, ”ingurisshu”.

1.2.2 Punctuation and writing

Of course, in addition to a ”leĴer” script, there isinterpunction– symbols

that indicate pauses, stops, quotes and other such things. In Japanese, the

followingpunctuationsymbols are common:

symbol

full stop

comma

single quotes and

double quotes and

parentheses and

kanji repeater

separators and

drawn sound

ellipsis ... (usually wriĴen twice: ......)

Less commonly used, but always good to have seen are the follow-

ing:

symbol

idem dito

hiragana repeaters ,

katakana repeaters ,

kanji sentence finaliser

And then there are western punctuations which have Japanese coun-

terparts, but tend to be expressed differently instead:

The symbol? is wriĴen the same way as in English, but typically the

particle is used instead. This particle serves both as question mark, as

well as a marker for parts of a sentences, indicating they are questioning

instead of stating. Similarly, the symbol! is wriĴen the same way as in

English, but typically exclamations are simply avoided. Instead, emphasis

particles such as or may be used for effect, but these do not signify