MODULE 1 Practicing Japanese Writing
Introduction
In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46
basic characters, or 71 including diacritics. With one or two minor exceptions, each
different sound in the Japanese language (that is, each different syllable, strictly each
mora) corresponds to one character in each syllabary. Unlike kanji, these characters
intrinsically represent sounds only; they convey meaning only as part of words.
Hiragana and katakana characters also originally derive from Chinese characters, but
they have been simplified and modified to such an extent that their origins are no longer
visually obvious.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this module the students should be able to:
Students will learn the essence of Japanese Writing Form using their common
lettering format.
Students will be able to understand words, sentences by the use of Hiragana
Hone calligraphy; its forms, brush and strokes.
Lesson 1 Writing Hiragana
ごい (Language):
Students will be tasked to study the Hiragana characters with the aid of a
chart table (Figure 1.0) below. They are responsible to memorize the said
table for them to be able to participate much interactively in future
discussions and lessons. One can optionally observe proper writing
etiquette such as the right brush and strokes to avoid mistakes in writing.
Once the task is done, the instructor will provide an exam for a
calligraphy test. This will gauge the students knowledge and capability of
memorizing and writing the Hiragana characters.
Hiragana Chart Table (Figure 1.0)
History
The hiragana syllabary consists of 48 syllables and is mainly used to
write word endings. Hiragana are also widely used in materials for
children, textbooks, animation and comic books, to write Japanese
words which are not normally written with kanji, such as adverbs and
some nouns and adjectives, or for words whose kanji are obscure or
obsolete.
In early versions of hiragana there were often many different
characters to represent the same syllable, however the system was
eventually simplified so that there was a one-to-one relationship
between spoken and written syllables. The present orthography of
hiragana was codified by the Japanese government in 1946.
