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The word ‘kun’ itself is an ‘ON’ reading but should never be seen as uppercase ‘KUN’
If the words ‘hiragana’ and ‘katakana’ are shown in gaigana, they are normally in lower- and upper-case respectively; these are examples of mixed ‘ON’ and ‘kun’ readings which is not very common. (hiraGAna and kataKAna). Other such mixed words would be in upper-case when using level 3, either-case in level 4, in lower-case using level 5, and in a mixed-case for level 6.
Common Japanese words well used in English such as ‘kanji’ do not need to take the gaigana font.
Rōmaji has developed its own quirks over the use of capital letters, for example weekdays are not capitalised e.g. nichiyoubi (Sunday), furthermore some language names take capitals e.g. Furansugo (French) but others don’t e.g. eigo (English). Like kana, gaigana doesn’t employ capital letters.
A small dot ∙ (nakaten) is used to help learners clarify the mutable parts of a verb or adjective.
A gaigana font will become available in due course here, this is used extensively in a companion language book (unfinished, so not yet due for publication).
Phonetic gaigana
The apostrophe suggests elision both in English text and in gaigana, as it donates small kana. This helps to highlight glides which suggest an ‘ON’ reading, while katakana glides are properly marked for correct transcription, in a way that tends to preserve greater parity with the original kana than does Rōmaji.
No substitution letters. Small ’tsu’ っ in hiragana is not a pronounced letter, but rather more akin to an accent, so it is represented by a consonant doubler ‘codo’. This symbol resembles an elongated っ ‘tsu’. Both the ‘codo’ and ‘fada’ are mirrors of one another which reflect their purpose as they ‘point’ to the letter being emphasised.
No macrons. Kana does not use macrons (the symbol over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long e.g. ō). Instead we employ the ‘fada’ which suggests its katakana equivalent ー. (The name [ ‘fada’; meaning ‘long’ comes from an accent mark in Irish, a language which is woefully under-represented in Japanese!). The status of both codo and fada is not as a pronounced letter, but more like an accent, so both are written above the ruled writing line. For convenience, both are typed in either upper or lower case using the left and right bracket keys, as there is other brackets (shift 9 & 0) should the need for them arise.
One drawback of romaji is the use of such symbols which is inconsistent with its role as a convenient representation of Japanese using the English alphabet and keyboard. When using gaigana, you will find a few of the lesser used keyboard symbols have been replaced by characters designed to ease the quick input of accurate Japanese. If you need symbols which have been jettisoned, a simple change of font is recommended. On the next page is a list of standard keyboard symbols which have been overridden.
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