Hi. I just started today with this app and it’s great.
But there’s one mistake so far (i only noticed it because someone pointed it out in the mems):
You say “ha / wa” is the same, but it’s different.
ha = は
wa = わ
I only did a quick wikipedia research, so maybe i’m wrong and “wa” can really be は.
If so, i apologise. If i’m right, please fix it soon so people don’t learn the wrong way!
Thanks!
Afaik ha is pronounced as wa when is used as a particle.
Good to know, thanks for the explanation!
は is pronounced as “wa” when used as a particle, also in expressions such as こんにちは “konnichiwa” meaning good morning, otherwise it is pronounced as “ha”.
へ is pronounced as “e” when used as a particle, otherwise it is pronounced “he”
を is pronounced as “o”, sounds more like “wo” when it follows n sound
ほんをかう “hon wo kau” meaning to buy a book.
Those 3 are the ones to keep in mind.
Thank you!
If は (ha) is at the end of the word its pronounced like わ (wa).
If I started Japanese I had the same problem.
Also if there isう (u) it often just makes previous vowel longer and does not sound at all
That’s not true – if it’s part of the word itself it’s pronounced “ha”, as in the company ヤマハ (やまは) Yamaha.
It’s if it’s a word of its own, the grammatical topic particle, that it’s pronounced “wa”. As in “kon’nichi wa”, for example – where it’s not part of the word itself. Or as in Yama wa takai desu “The mountain is tall”, which is also spelled 山は高いです (やま は たかい です) but here “ha” is not part of the word but the particle.
Thanks, I read it somewhere and memorized it that way. All that glitters isn’t gold, goes to internet.
Meaning, if you are right, I still don’t get this particle stuff
could you please explain why it is not part of a word if it is written konnichiwa
Japanese is written without spaces by the Japanese themselves, so when we write it with Latin letters we put spaces in… but I’m not sure whether there are official rules. At any rate, you may find different people using spaces and hyphens differently.
I wrote kon’nichi wa, you write konnichiwa.
Either way, it’s a compound of kon (now, this) + nichi (day) + wa (the particle that you can’t really translate) – literally meaning something like “it’s day now” but idiomatically meaning “hello, good day”.
I’d say it’s not part of the word but I’m not sure how to prove that.
konnichiwa is shortened from an expression of something along the lines of konnichiwha ii tenki desu ne (fine weather today isn’t it) or konnichi wa ikaga desu ka (how are you doing today).
I am positive I read that on Wikipedia, but I couldn’t find it just now.