Day 3 ま, や, ら And わ Lines
4 minute read · Sun 5 DecemberDay 3 ま, や, ら And わ Lines
Welcome back to the third lesson in the series! You've really made some great progress to make it this far, just a little further to go, and a few more rules to learn.
あ い う え お
か き く け こ (+'k')
さ し す せ そ (+'s')
た ち つ て と (+'t')
な に ぬ ね の (+'n')
は ひ へ ふ ほ (+'h')
The next sixteen, or four lines are the ま, や, ら and わ lines. The や and わ lines are short and only have three characters in them each. And one of the kana in the わ line is only used for grammatical points. More on that in a bit.
ま (ma) as in 'mama',
み (mi) as in 'mean',
む (mu) as in 'moon',
め (me) as in 'may',
も (mo) as in 'more'
や (ya) as in 'yummy',
ゆ (yu) as in 'you',
よ (yo) as in 'yo-yo'
ら (ra) as in 'rabbit',
り (ri) like 'ring'
る (ru) 'ruby,
れ (re) pronounced as 'rare',
ろ (ro) like 'roll'.
Japanese / r / is more like a cross between English / r / and / l /. It's a 'flap R'. Have a listen to the pronunciation in the Kana chart. る (ru) and ろ (ro) look very similar, pay attention to the end of the stroke curling around on る (ru). You could imagine that る (ru) has a 'ruby' which 'rolled' away on ろ (ro).
わ (wa) as in 'one',
を (wo) as in 'worry' - technically is / wo /, but it's normally pronounced as / o / just like お (o). In actual conversations it's used as an object marker. It's not used in any vocabulary.
ん (n) is pronounced nasalized like French or like 'amber' with your mouth closed. No words in Japanese begin with ん (n), which is the basis for the Japanese word game Shiritori.
And here's today's homework:
- • Watch the video, and match the shape with its sound. You can see the next lines of kana on the chart
- • Follow the stroke order and write it on your own on a piece of paper 10× times or more. Gridded paper can help you get the proportions correct which you can download and print here.
- • Then, write it down again without looking at anything.
- • Come back in 3 days to repeat Task 3. Set a reminder on your calendar while you remember!
- • By the way, it's day 3. It's time to review the first fifteen kana again to refresh your memory!
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