Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Minor nit: the kana are not alphabets, they're syllabaries. Each character represents a complete syllable (except ン/ん) as opposed to representing a consonant or vowel sound.

They are really straight-forward to learn as, unlike in English, they don't have di and trigraphs and extremely few pronunciation exceptions. Learning the characters can be done in an afternoon, though of course being able to read them quickly will take quite a bit of practice.



Both kanas definitely have digraphs, they are called yōon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Don


Oh right, I forgot about those. They're really so straight-forward though that they barely count, in my opinion.


That makes sense! Not having variations based on neighbors is a very nice simplicity to have, except for the lengthening and doubling symbols.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: