4 ms·

A favorite of Japanese study beginners is learning how to distinguish between ツ and シ, as well as between ソ and ン.

• cperciva 9y ago
  For those of us who don't read Japanese, can you explain what the four characters in question mean?
  • unfreezingly 9y ago
    They're katakana characters, used mainly for transcribing foreign words. シ is "shi", ツ is "tsu", ン is "n" and ソ is "so".
  • derefr 9y ago
    No meaning per se, these are from the katakana syllabic alphabet. They make the sounds "tsu" (ツ), "shi" (シ), "so" (ソ) and "n" (ン).
  • x1798DE 9y ago
    They are phonetic characters, so they don't mean anything. シ (shi), ツ (tsu), ノ (no), ソ (so) and ン (n), all in katakana (used to write loan words and slang).
    • tankenmate 9y ago
      Actually Katakana derived from Kanji, but were typically only used for their sound rather than their meaning and a very very simplified version of how you would write the character quickly allowing for lifting the brush (Hiragana is the simplified version quickly without lifting the brush) roughly speaking; so you are mostly right but not completely. シ comes from the Chinese character 之, meaning either "of" or "this" ツ comes from the Chinese character 州 (although some researchers disagree), meaning "state" or "province" ソ comes from the Chinese character 會, meaning "meet", "party", or "interview" ン comes from the Chinese character 尓 (again not clear), meaning "you" or "that" This divergence happened because Chinese characters were used to write Japanese which is mostly from a different language family. Some Chinese characters were used by some for their meaning (ideogram) and used by others for the sound they made to approximate the sounds used in Japanese. Obviously Chinese influenced the Japanese language (for example numbers in Japanese sound similar to numbers in middle ages colloquial Hokkien). Over the last 1,000 years or so there have been numerous occasions for changes, standardisation and simplification. So even to those who study these changes over time it can sometimes be unclear.
      • gfaure 9y ago
        > ソ comes from the Chinese character 會 ソ comes from 曾 ("once, at one point") not 會. Yes, those are different characters.
        • gurkendoktor 9y ago
          It gets worse. 曾 and 會 in your comment look clearly distinct to me in Safari, but if I check with Firefox, they suddenly look very similar. The trick is that 曾 is sometimes written with 八 as its "roof", which makes it look like 會, and sometimes with 丷, depending on your font. (Similar to 兑 and 兌 in the article)
  • tjallingt 9y ago
    Not a Japanese reader so i can't fill you in on what exactly the characters mean but they are characters from the Japanese katakana script. Katakana are generally used for loanwords and each character represents a sound: ツ - tsu シ - shi ソ - so ン - n The reason these are difficult to learn is because the tiny differences in stroke angles (especially when handwritten) make it easy to confuse them.
    • kunimu 9y ago
      On their own they don't mean anything, however the first four may appear and indeed do as multiple words on their own, or as part of other words. Japanese has many homophones.
    • Jach 9y ago
      All the kana are easy to learn if you use mnemonics, though I admit handwriting recognition might be harder. It took me a moment to recall some of the mnemonics themselves, eventually you just see them as they are... For tsu, I can think of Two sewing needles, for shi, I can think of "she has a funny face", for so it's one "so-ing" needle, for n it's a cyclops who can only say "nnnnnn". (https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/ https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/ and https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/ https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/ have some great mnemonics to start out, I remember only altering a few.)
    • anw 9y ago
      In college, my Japanese teacher told us that a lot of foreigners get these characters wrong, but if you know the stroke order then it's easy to see the difference. シ (shi) is written top to bottom. You can see that all the starting points for the strokes line up vertically on the left. Also, the last stroke curves from the bottom-left to the upper-right. ツ (tsu) is written from left to right. You can see that all the starting points for the strokes line up horizontally at the top. Also, the last stroke curves from the upper-right down to the bottom-left. ン (n) lke 'shi' is written top to bottom. The starting points for the strokes line up vertically on the left. It also uses the same direction for the longer, final stroke as 'shi'. ソ (so) like 'tsu' is written left to right. The starting points for the strokes line up vertically on the left. It also uses the same direction for the longer, final stroke as 'tsu'.
• craftyguy 9y ago
  In my browser, those are just 4 identical empty squares. I guess I'm a beginner since I can't distinguish between them!
  • ageofwant 9y ago
    Installing the free hanazono fonts should sort you out For arch: pacman -S ttf-hanazono
    • escherplex 9y ago
      Interesting. Installed hanazono font HanaMinPlus.ttf in Firefox as J-default and even in this comment section the distinction between katakana 'n' and 'so' is quite clear whereas using MS Gothic it's somewhat ambiguous. Even more so when the two fonts are juxtaposed in LibreOffice.
      • fasdgafa 9y ago
        You might want to look at some Kyokasho-tai typefaces; they should be pretty close to how we are taught to write.
    • craftyguy 9y ago
      awesome, thank you for actually being helpful rather than just downvoting and moving on!
• malydok 9y ago
  Handwriting them makes for an 'a-ha' moment. ツ and ソ are written left-right while シ and ン top-down.