1.2. WRITING SPOKEN JAPANESE 13
has been doubled in length, but in hiragana the doubling is different. Of
the five basic Japanese vowel sounds ( , , , and ) the first three
have fairly simple long vowel counterparts in hiragana, simply doubling
in writing, but the laĴer two are more complicated, having two different
wriĴen forms:
hiragana katakana,
,While the pronunciation for , and are intuitive (same
sound, twice as long), the pronunciations for , , and and
more subtle. The first, , is a ”same sound, twice as long” , but
is actually pronounced similar to the ’-ay’ in the English ’hay’. For ,
the pronunciation is like ”oa” in ”oak”, with often sounding the same,
but when pronounced slowly, having a distinct hint of ”u” at the end.
This doubling is the same for syllables with consonant sounds, so
that for instance vowel doublings for the syllables from the –column look
as follows:
hiragana katakana,
,In addition to long vowels, Japanese words may contain ”glides”.
Being consideredcontractionsof –row syllables with any one of the three
syllables , and , glides are wriĴen as the –row syllable, normal
sized, and then the , or syllable at either half height (for horizon-
tally wriĴen Japanese) or half width (for vertically wriĴen Japanese). To
illustrate: