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 「ゃゅょ glides」

A ‘youon’ (or Yōon) is a elided syllable or ‘diphthong’, in which a ‘mora’ or ‘unit of sound’  is formed embracing a ‘y’ sound. Youon's generally use i-column kana, such as き (ki), plus a small ゃ‘ya’, ゅ‘yu’ or ょ‘yo’ (or katakana equivalent). An example is きょう kyo’u (today), contrast this with きよう kiyou (skillful- this takes a big よ’yo’). It is likely that youon developed due to the influence of Chinese, as old Japanese did not have youon sounds. This is helpful in determining that the kanji concerned will most probably be using its ‘on’ reading, as these are a main characteristic.

Youon glides are followed by an apostrophe when written in gaigana, which unlike romaji, makes them easy to spot. Generally the apostrophe indicating a youon glide will follow 3 gaigana letters e.g. kyo’ unlike the vowel glides; this is to help in spelling and pronunciation; for example かにゅう kanyu’u, (joining) verses かんゆう kanyuu (persuasion), both mostly appear romanised as ‘kanyu’.

Did you notice the word ‘Yōon’ itself above could be interpreted as yooon or youon in standard romaji? No such ambiguity can arise when using gaigana.

You will very occasionally see youon glides formed out of non i-column kana. The て/で (te) column is probably the main example. Otherwise you might find odditys like ふゅ (fyu’) or katakana only ヴュ (vyu’) if you look for long enough.

「アイウエオ glides」

Japanese is traditionally spoken with about 100 syllables whereas English uses around 3000.   As a result the transfer of words across the languages often results in the original word taking on the closest one possible in Japanese.   Katakana is used for loan words and it has evolved a series of vowel glides which offer a greater range of possibilities.  This convention is relatively new, so many older loan-words do not use it.   Half-height versions of kana vowels are used to express foreign mora in a similar fashion to youon glides. As a general rule, vowel glides such as クェku’e, mostly use the relatively muted ‘u-column’ kana.

Vowel glides are marked in gaigana by an apostrophe between the two vowels, this apostrophe assists in promoting the correct use of small katakana vowels, and marks them apart from youon glides as the apostrophe follows two letters as opposed to three. Furthermore it is easier to differentiate vowel glides from ordinary mora which might look like a glide when written in romaji, e.g. クェイク ku’eiku (quake) has a glide unlike  クエーカー kueekaa (Quaker).

Since gaigana retains a greater loyalty to kana in the spelling of vowel glides, a more simple transliteration is possible, as there is not the many variant spelling interpretations of romaji, using alien letters which may have an arbitrary relationship to the kana in question. In the example above for  クェ ‘qe’ and ‘qwe’ are just two of the romaji spelling options available.

Japanese language learning
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