What does ~ mean in Japanese
- Thread starter wizcoder
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- 8 Aug 2005
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usually it's just a placeholder, but your example doesn't make sense. could you attach an image of the page in question?
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- #3
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Also the book explains what い is but when it's placed here in the word sensee せんせい why is i used instead of another E. The book explains in a super brief way, I would like a better explanation. I totally understand the use of small tsu and stuff but I don't understand that and
for the word "kookoo" why is う used instead of another お.
Thanks
for the word "kookoo" why is う used instead of another お.
Thanks
- 29 Jun 2014
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- 14
Oh, THAT tilde. You will see it in some textbooks and the such. In this case is shows that さん and ご, amongst other things, are suffixes. So the tilde represents things like names, nouns and the such. It doesn't actually mean anything specific when written that way...you should place whatever is related there; as nice gaijin has said, it's a placeholder.
*EDIT* That's why it says "... years old", which means that, for example, if you want to say 20 years old, you would say 二十 + さい (The tilde here is replaced with 20, removing the placeholder).
*EDIT 2* As for why せんせい has い at the end, that's how the word is actually spelt and pronounced. Sometimes you see a romanization of "sensee" but that is just trying to help with pronunciation; it's not actually え at the end but い.
*EDIT 3* Same case with "kookoo". I've seen many resources, Genki included, where the romanization is more towards making things more understandable for English-users. "kookoo" is indeed actually "koukou". It has two Kanji in it; 高 and 校, both of which are pronounced こう ("kou") in this case.
P.S. Don't worry yourself about why it says "kookoo" and "こうこう". The "kookoo" is meant to help you, but if you already learned how to read Hiragana and Katakana, you should try to avoid looking at the Romaji and look at the Hiragana for the proper way of writing it.
*EDIT* That's why it says "... years old", which means that, for example, if you want to say 20 years old, you would say 二十 + さい (The tilde here is replaced with 20, removing the placeholder).
*EDIT 2* As for why せんせい has い at the end, that's how the word is actually spelt and pronounced. Sometimes you see a romanization of "sensee" but that is just trying to help with pronunciation; it's not actually え at the end but い.
*EDIT 3* Same case with "kookoo". I've seen many resources, Genki included, where the romanization is more towards making things more understandable for English-users. "kookoo" is indeed actually "koukou". It has two Kanji in it; 高 and 校, both of which are pronounced こう ("kou") in this case.
P.S. Don't worry yourself about why it says "kookoo" and "こうこう". The "kookoo" is meant to help you, but if you already learned how to read Hiragana and Katakana, you should try to avoid looking at the Romaji and look at the Hiragana for the proper way of writing it.
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- #6
Literally answered all my questions, I can read hiragana and katana pretty much perfectly now ... It shows romaji so I thought I have to know it as well aha, i'll just only look and H and K from now on
thanks
- 22 Feb 2008
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There are some variations to represent long vowels in romaji. "Koo" is a way for "kō(long vowel "o")", since learners might misunderstand こうこう is four syllables "ko u ko u", as you did. It's actually pronounced two long vowels "kōkō". See the following explanation.
Hepburn romanization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
せんせい is sometimes pronounced "sensē". That's the reason of "sensee".
