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I'm familiar with Japanese, but I had a question: do the phonetic building blocks have individual names? In western alphabets, the letters each have a name tha
by cloudjacker 10y ago
I'm familiar with Japanese, but I had a question: do the phonetic building blocks have individual names?
In western alphabets, the letters each have a name that is separate and sometimes loosely related to their sounds.
In Japanese alphabets, I haven't noticed this yet, but I've never asked specifically
Do they?
- rspeer 10y agoI'm far from an expert or even intermediate in Japanese, but I think not. The names of the kana are just their sounds. A sketch in Azumanga Daioh comes to mind, where one girl is talking about the character じ ("ji"), and another girl thinks she's talking about hemhorroids, 痔 ("ji").
- TheRealPomax 10y agoAs an inherent phoneme, the kana don't really "need" separate names, their pronunciation already works in sentences, although the columns (based on consonant) and rows (based on vowel sound) do have their own designation, being 行(ぎょう) and 段(だん) respectively. For example, if you wanted to "precisely" talk about し, you could refer to it as さ行のい段 ("the i-dan entry in sa-gyou"), or even さ行のい段の「し」 ("the 'shi' that is the i-dan entry in sa-gyou")