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Question on Writing

Clocks

後輩
14 Nov 2006
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Hello everyone. I know this is probably pretty ignorant but when I am studying vocabulary I always see that they include a dash to show where a sound is lengthened.

My question is this: When I am actually writing in Japanese, should I include these dashes or leave them out? I get a feeling i should leave them out but I dont want to be making mistakes. Thanks for any help anyone could give.
 
re you talking about kana or romaji?

In katakana, a long vowel is almost always shown using a long horizontal line
ラーメン

In romaji, it would either be shown using a macron (horizontal line) over the vowel, or by repeating the vowel
rāmen
raamen
 
The dash is very important; Japanese characters are morae, and they have a rhythmic significance when reading and speaking the language. the lengthened vowels (and likewise, lengthened consonants preceded by the small っ/ッ) take up the rhythmic count of two characters, as opposed to one.

neglecting these characters completely changes the word.
 
Here's just one example of how leaving out the dash will completely change the meaning of the word:

ハト pigeon
ハート heart
 
Oh, thanks a lot you guys! Yeah that would make sense I dont know why I assumed otherwise.
Well at least I'll only have a handful of words to rememorize, as opposed to learning all of them that way . 😌


Oh yeah and one more little thing im confused about: When reading vertically, there are some places with a " ' " hyphen in them. What do these represent?
 
Last edited:
Oh yeah and one more little thing im confused about: When reading vertically, there are some places with a " ' " hyphen in them. What do these represent?
Do you mean a vertical line? | <- like this? than it's the same as in ハート (lengthening a vowel), just that the line is drawn downwards when writing vertically...
 
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