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Accent
The accent is that part of a word where more focus is placed on one of more syllables than the rest of the word. For instance, the word “attention” has its accent on “ten” in English, while the accent lies on “on” in French.
Chouon 長音
A vowel extender mark (ー) used in katakana but is very rare in hiragana, which usually takes another kana vowel instead.
Clause
A group of words with a subject and predicate, but not forming a full sentence.
Codo
A gaigana. representation of the katakana vowel extender mark (ー or Chouon).
Colloquial
Spoken conversation, usually used to mean the informal spoken version of a language, as contrasted to formal language.
Compound
A word that has been formed by combining two or more words. Similarly when used with reference to kanji, it indicates it is a combination of others.
Contraction
Certain parts of speech get shortened by either dropping syllables or deforming them. An example of this in English is the word “cannot” being turned into “can’t”. In Japanese an example is nakereba being turned into nakya’.
Dakuten
Known colloquially as ‘ten ten’ ("dot dot"), this is a diacritic sign used in kana to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Compare with handakuten.
Diacritic
A mark, added to a letter to indicate a special phonetic value.
Diphthongs
Vowels that slide from one sound to the other. An example is the word ‘mouse’, in there is no syllabic break between the two vowels ‘ou’.
Fada
A representation of small ‘tsu’ in gaigana.
Furigana
Small hiragana, written above kanji as a reading or pronunciation aid.
Gaiji
Literally means "foreign characters", are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding systems. These include variant forms of common kanji and can include non-kanji symbols as well.
Gaigana
A representational script for Japanese based on a consistant transcription of Japanese kana .
Genitive
Expressing a word or part of a phrase that belongs to, or is specified by, another word or part of the phrase (from the Latin “genitus”, meaning “begotten”). E.g. ‘Dublin's fair city’
Glottal stop
A speech sound produced by a momentary complete closure of the glottis (the opening between the vocal cords at the upper part of the larynx), followed by a sudden release. The small ‘tsu’ is a stop consonant.
Glyph
In typography, a glyph is the shape given in a particular typeface to a specific grapheme, symbol or character.
Grapheme
A collection of strokes that form an identifiable part of a kanji. All kanji characters themselves are inherently graphemes.
Handakuten
Known colloquially maru ("circle"), is a diacritic used with the ‘h-column’ kana to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with ‘p’. Compare with dakuten.
Hentaigana
Hentaigana are alternative kana letter forms equivalent to standard kana characters. As manyo’ugana glyphs became simplified into cursive forms, hentaigana and hiragana were the result. Many different kanji could be used to represent the same syllable in manyo’ugana
Hepburn
A phonetic Romanization designed by devised by the Reverend James Curtis Hepburn for his Japanese/English dictionary published in 1867.
Hiragana
A cursive Japanese phonetic script.
Homonym
A word the same as another in sound and spelling but different in meaning, as left “remaining” and left “direction.”
Homophone
A word pronounced the same as another but differing in meaning, whether spelled the same way or not, such as ‘heir’ and ‘air’.
Honorific
A form of language in which one raises the perceived status of subjects.
Ideograph
A whole character which conveys a meaning or idea
Inflection
Modifying the form of a verbal word to indicate its grammatical role.
Intonation
The way something is pronounced in terms of tonal progression.
Kana
The collective term for hiragana and katakana.
Kanji
The Japanese version of Chinese characters. Note that not all Kanji exist in the Chinese character set, and not all Chinese characters exist in the Japanese character set.
Katakana
The angular Japanese phonetic script. Katakana words take a bold font when represented in gaigana.
Kokuji
Kanji characters developed in Japan, rather than imported from China
Kunrei
Short for “Kunrei shiki”, this is a syntactic Romanisation scheme developed by the Japanese cabinet and officially in use in its current form since 1954. It is not as popular as the phonetic Hepburn romanisation.
Manyo’ugana
Manyo’ugana was a precursor to hiragana and katakana, the Kanji were mostly used for their phonetic value rather than their meaning
Maru
Also known as ‘handakuten’, maru means ‘circle’. It is the sign used to indicate ‘ha’ column kana should instead be pronounced with ‘p’. Compare with ‘ten ten’.
Mora
The minimal unit of time equivalent to the normal short sound or syllable.
Okurigana
Okurigana (literally "accompanying letters") are kana suffixes following Kanji stems to ‘conjugate’ verbs and adjectives, okurigana are almost invariably written with hiragana
Onomatopoeia
A word that sounds like itself like ‘moo’.
Particles
A class of words that are used to join words or parts of a phrase depending on their particular grammatical role.
Part of speech
A word or collection of words that act as a single grammatical entity in a phrase.
Phonetic
Describes the way language is pronounced.
Prefix
Something that is added to the front of a word to change its meaning in some way. Contrast to “suffix”.
Radical
A Kanji that can be used to index and look up other kanji with. There are 214 of these radicals, called the “classical radicals”, but many of these have one or more variations when used as grapheme in larger kanji, leading many more graphemes being used as radical.
Suffix
Something that is added to the end of a word to change its meaning in some way.
Roomaji
Representation of Japanese in letters of the Romance alphabet.
Syllable
A unit of spoken language, consisting of a single uninterrupted sound.
Syntax
The set of rules that dictate how words are combined to form sentences
Ten ten
Also known as daku ten, it means "dot dot". This is the sign used in kana to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced.
Tonal progression
The way pitch changes during pronunciation.
Transliteration
The act of writing out a language in another language, without translating it.
Verb root
We use this term to refer to the immutable element in a verb. It is usually the Kanji part of the verb spelling. For example ‘no’ of ‘nomimasu’ is the verb root.
Voiced letter
A letter with a marker ‘ten-ten’ (dot dot) is common with hiragana and katakana to indicate a voiced sound. E.g. か ‘ka’ is voiced が or ‘ga’
Youon
A Youon is a glide or contracted syllable (or diphthong) in which a mora is formed with an added ‘y’ sound, these normally occur in ‘i-column’ kana e.g. kiき + yoょ= kyo’.
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