Small Hiragana words

B

Ben W Bell

先輩

13 Sep 2004

135

3

• 15 Mar 2005

• #1

Learning through my hiragana I have a query.

しや is transliterated in Hepburn to sha (being composed of shi and ya). Fine this is acceptable. However how then do you write words that have the shi and ya in them separately in Hiragana? Words like かしや (kashiya - sweet shop), Under the small Hiragana system this would be kasha. Or am I making a deal out of nothing and once I get into Katakana and kanji this will all disappear?

 

Index

窶禿塒弯

26 Feb 2005

601

27

• 15 Mar 2005

• #2

You've got to use the small や、ゆ and よ。
しや is actually shiya. Sha is しゃ。
かしや is in fact kashiya. Kasha would be かしゃ.

 

B

Ben W Bell

先輩

13 Sep 2004

135

3

• 15 Mar 2005

• Thread starter
• #3

Gosh, you're right. Darn small fonts on my printouts. Yes, I'd never twigged that they were actually smaller in size. Dear knows what I thought it meant by small then. Yes thank you for clearing that up.

 

TwistedMac

後輩

4 Mar 2004

2,267

96

• 16 Mar 2005

• #4

That stuff is called yoo-on (or compound syllables).. it's a bit tricky for us beginners...

It's made up of a syllable from the い Dan and one from the や Gyo (which is small.)

that's basically it though All you need to know about yoo-on

 

Glenn

一切皆苦

8 Jan 2004

7,842

200

• 18 Mar 2005

• #5

Note that if you're reading old Japanese (pre-WWII literature), there will be no distinction between しや and しゃ, or even かつて and かって. There were also some other seemingly strange conventions, but I'll leave those for now. I'm just throwing this out there for your information, by the way. I doubt you'll have to worry about this much.