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ー is just a dash.
by meskyanichi 16y ago
ー is just a dash.
- tetsuo13 16y agoAre there dashes in Japanese? I suppose the interpunct character (・) best represents the idea. The ー character is typically used with hiragana and katakana to elongate the previous character's tailing sound: リー for the name Lee (rii), メートル for meter (meetoru), as examples. The ー character is not used after kanji because their sound cannot be elongated.
- patio11 16y agoThere are a few flavors of dashes in modern Japanese documents. Only one of the following three characters is a dash. ー―一 If you were aiming for a dash, you want the one in the middle, because the two to either side are very definitely not dashes.
- meskyanichi 16y agoThanks for the detailed information! Actually it was referring to what you said earlier: "The nobasu character (ー) ordinarily lengthens the vowel sound directly proceeding it" But did not know that it "had" to be directly followed by katakana. :)
- tptacek 16y agoThat is a very subtle emoticon. It evokes Totoro, for me.
- akx 16y agoHah, excellent. Now it does that for me too.