Question Ou compared to o and u

[dawdle004]

I have been learning japanese for about a week and just found out that the short version of 王様 is 王 which is ou.
But I have also learnt that there are individual characters for o お and u うso, as an european this kind of confuses me, is there any reason why is it it's own different character or they aren't both formed using hiragana?
Thanks in advance!

 

[Buntaro]

Hi Dawdle and welcome to the forum.

Let's take this one step at a time. Japanese has long syllables and short syllables. These are completely different syllables and compose completely different words.

For example,

Obasan = Aunt
Obaasan = Grandmother
Ojisan = Uncle
Ojiisan = Grandfather

Let's look at words using your example. My favorite is, "The koujiki is reading the kojiki ."

Koujiki = homless person

Kojiki = a book on Japanese history, The Annals of Japanese History.

So my sentence means, "The homeless person is reading the Annals of Japanese History.

Koujiki and kojiki are completely different words, and Japanese people would never mix them up.

Does this make sense so far?

 

[mdchachi]

I have been learning japanese for about a week and just found out that the short version of 王様 is 王 which is ou.
But I have also learnt that there are individual characters for o お and u うso, as an european this kind of confuses me, is there any reason why is it it's own different character or they aren't both formed using hiragana?
Thanks in advance!

It sounds like you are not understanding the role of hiragana in the language. Maybe try reading through this thread and viewing the recommended videos?

Japanese writing system for beginners

There are many people who would like to learn Japanese but don't know where to begin. I know they would like to start by learning simple phrases such as "Hello," "How are you?", "It's a nice day, isn't it?", "What is your name", etc., but I want everyone to put aside the learning of such phrases...

jref.com

 

[nice gaijin]

hi @dawdle004, welcome to the wonderful and sometimes confusing world of Japanese!

As you've already noticed, some words have long vowels (called 長音, chōon, "long sound"), which I prefer to represent in rōmaji with a macron (ā, ī, ū, ē, ō) instead of spelling out the vowel twice (how it would sound phonetically), or as it would be written in hiragana (this is a common approach, as Buntaro wrote "koujiki", for example), which can confuse English speakers into thinking it's a dipthong (where two distinct vowel sounds are paired, like "ew" or "aye").

The fundamental reason for this distinction, as you'll learn, is that Japanese is a moraic language, which means that the fundamental phonological unit of the language, called a mora, which is represented by individual kana characters (with some exceptions but we'll keep it simple). It's best to think of kana like notes on a sheet of music, and each note has the same time signature. A long vowel, then, is a note extended by one count. This is why Japanese people will sometimes clap as they "sound out" a word, indicating how many mora are in the word.

As Buntaro mentioned, a standard vowel sound and a long vowel are distinct from each other in Japanese, meaning you can create "minimal pairs," which is a fancy way to say two words that are exactly the same except for one sound (e.g. cat and hat, peg and pig, willow and pillow). The difference between a vowel and a long vowel is as obvious in Japanese as these examples in English. So in Japanese, "osama" and "ōsama" are literally as different as "Osama (bin Laden)" and "king".

now, WHY they are written differently in hiragana is a good question, and I'm sure there's some convoluted historical reason for this quirk...
A little internet search later, YEP! What is historical kana usage?

As with many things in Japanese, you have the option to just learn the basic rules and get used to it, or to do a deep dive into the reasoning behind it, which (WARNING:) may be as enlightening as it can be confusing for a beginning language learner.

To start, definitely work on getting hiragana down, understand that there are long vowels (and long consonants as well, but that's a different conversation), and that they are crucial for properly understanding and pronouncing Japanese vocabulary. You don't need to fully understand the "why" in order to use it properly, but it does come in handy when you want to write a lengthy forum post.

 

[dawdle004]

Hi Dawdle and welcome to the forum.

Let's take this one step at a time. Japanese has long syllables and short syllables. These are completely different syllables and compose completely different words.

For example,

Obasan = Aunt
Obaasan = Grandmother
Ojisan = Uncle
Ojiisan = Grandfather

Let's look at words using your example. My favorite is, "The koujiki is reading the kojiki."

Koujiki = homless person

Kojiki = a book on Japanese history, The Annals of Japanese History.

So my sentence means, "The homeless person is reading the Annals of Japanese History.

Koujiki and kojiki are completely different words, and Japanese people would never mix them up.

Does this make sense so far?

Thank you for the practical examples, it helped to associate them to my confusion

 

[dawdle004]

It sounds like you are not understanding the role of hiragana in the language. Maybe try reading through this thread and viewing the recommended videos?

Japanese writing system for beginners

There are many people who would like to learn Japanese but don't know where to begin. I know they would like to start by learning simple phrases such as "Hello," "How are you?", "It's a nice day, isn't it?", "What is your name", etc., but I want everyone to put aside the learning of such phrases...

jref.com

I barely started and I know I have a long way to go, even to scratch the surface of it so thank you very much for the resources

 

[dawdle004]

hi @dawdle004, welcome to the wonderful and sometimes confusing world of Japanese!

As you've already noticed, some words have long vowels (called 長音, chōon, "long sound"), which I prefer to represent in rōmaji with a macron (ā, ī, ū, ē, ō) instead of spelling out the vowel twice (how it would sound phonetically), or as it would be written in hiragana (this is a common approach, as Buntaro wrote "koujiki", for example), which can confuse English speakers into thinking it's a dipthong (where two distinct vowel sounds are paired, like "ew" or "aye").

The fundamental reason for this distinction, as you'll learn, is that Japanese is a moraic language, which means that the fundamental phonological unit of the language, called a mora, which is represented by individual kana characters (with some exceptions but we'll keep it simple). It's best to think of kana like notes on a sheet of music, and each note has the same time signature. A long vowel, then, is a note extended by one count. This is why Japanese people will sometimes clap as they "sound out" a word, indicating how many mora are in the word.

As Buntaro mentioned, a standard vowel sound and a long vowel are distinct from each other in Japanese, meaning you can create "minimal pairs," which is a fancy way to say two words that are exactly the same except for one sound (e.g. cat and hat, peg and pig, willow and pillow). The difference between a vowel and a long vowel is as obvious in Japanese as these examples in English. So in Japanese, "osama" and "ōsama" are literally as different as "Osama (bin Laden)" and "king".

now, WHY they are written differently in hiragana is a good question, and I'm sure there's some convoluted historical reason for this quirk...
A little internet search later, YEP! What is historical kana usage?

As with many things in Japanese, you have the option to just learn the basic rules and get used to it, or to do a deep dive into the reasoning behind it, which (WARNING:) may be as enlightening as it can be confusing for a beginning language learner.

To start, definitely work on getting hiragana down, understand that there are long vowels (and long consonants as well, but that's a different conversation), and that they are crucial for properly understanding and pronouncing Japanese vocabulary. You don't need to fully understand the "why" in order to use it properly, but it does come in handy when you want to write a lengthy forum post.

Thank you for the answer and the short history lesson, I will keep all these specific terms noted in order to look them up myself and learn some new things

 

[Toritoribe]

Let's look at words using your example. My favorite is, "The koujiki is reading the kojiki."

Koujiki = homless person

Kojiki = a book on Japanese history, The Annals of Japanese History.

So my sentence means, "The homeless person is reading the Annals of Japanese History.

Koujiki and kojiki are completely different words, and Japanese people would never mix them up.

Sorry for nitpicking, but you remembered the word wrongly, and therefore your example is inappropriate. "Homeless person" is kojiki(乞食), which is completely the same pronunciation as kojiki(古事記) Records of Ancient Matters. (Note that the pitch accent is different between these words.) There are words koujiki such like 高直 or 香食, but these words are rarely used ones, and never mean "homeless person".

 

[Buntaro]

Dawdle,

Thank you for giving a 'like' to my thread Japanese writing system for beginners. How many hiragana and katakana can you read and write?

 

[Haruto Uzumaki]

What is historical kana usage?

Now I fully understand why I was seeing words like 思ふ and 信ずる in official documents, I thought maybe that's how it used to be pronounced at the time of writing but I always thought that was rather quick for a pronunciation change. So it seems more likely that those words were pronounced with a modern pronunciation at the time of writing (I think it was a section of the Japanese constitution?) and just hadn't been written after the reform occurred. I like to imagine that by leaving it that way, it's the Japanese way of making it sound "old and official" like how the US constitution sounds to us modern people.

 

[Buntaro]

Toritoribe,

Thanks for the correction. I guess I mistook a pitch difference for a long/short syllable difference. Thanks for correcting my mistake and keeping me on my toes! Feel free to nitpick my mistakes anytime.

 

[Buntaro]

Dawdle,

I want to emphasize what Nice Gaijin is saying. There are two ways to write a Japanese long syllable in "ABC's". To use his example, the word in Japanese for "king" can be written two ways, ōsama or ousama.