Learning Japanese - Kana Keyboard Chart

Well since the 24th of December 2017 or so, I started learning Japanese. I have to say this starts off a lot easier than french despite myself being a native English (Aus) speaker and is much more logical, it doesn't have any of that double-negative crap that western languages have (e.g. "You're an idiot, aren't you?" - If you answered "no" for "I am not an idiot" you may be making a mistake since the question literally asks "Are you (not) and idiot?" and answering "no" basically admits you are one. But culturally, "no" is accepted for "No I am not (the taunting question)"

Anyway back on-topic, the reason why I created this particular page on this google webpage is because I had just (sort of) finished my kana keyboard chart that I made for myself (and for the world to use). I personally found it easier to use than a 5x10 chart. The kana keyboard "design" I use here is based off Google's kana keyboard app which you can get from the play store. The original keyboard application only showed hiragana (see below) so I learnt hiragana fairly quickly but katakana was left behind and rather than stare inefficiently at a katakana chart, I think it's more effective if I just create my own and wazzah! here it is. Because of the large spacing it's much easier to circle and draw lines to connect similar kana (e.g. つ/し・ツ/シ・tsu/shi) and to handwrite your own alternative writing styles next to the characters (e.g. the そ(so) character can be written in two strokes and one stroke)

Unlike western phone keyboards, the kana keyboard actually feels quite nice in a compact typing environment unlike the universal QWERTY keyboards. Being a person who used a "dumb phone" until very recently, the multi-tap function is something I'm quite used to but multi-tapping takes forever to do its job effectively (~15 taps to get the % symbol on old phones  and if you missed it, lmao) and that's where the touch screen's swipe capability comes in which is what in my opinion, makes the kana keyboard quite nice to use. You can use it for English too but it feels kinda akward since a lot of the buttons do not have a function swiping to the right.

Anyway in case you don't know how Google Sites operate, the PDF download link is down at the bottom of this article. There is no copyright but if you want to, you can credit me by linking direct to this page or just mentioning "ZdrytchX" somewhere (don't misspell it lol). You are free to redistribute and modify/whatever with this document.

Hiragana Chart

Katakana Chart

For those wondering why the orientation may look a bit weird, the ordering is from the centre, then to the left, then rotating clockwise around to the button. The somewhat official ordering of vowels on most articles I see regarding kana is A-I-U-E-O. The way you type on the Japanese mobile keyboard is by holding the key and if applicable, drag it in the direction of the wanted vowel, and select the kanji or phrase if needed. Like typing on a computer, finding the correct kanji can be a pain in the butt.

  Vowel                  K,G                S,Z (shi,ji)

..   u  ..      ..  ku  ..      ..  su  ..

 i   a   e      ki  ka  ke      shi sa  se

..   o  ..      ..  ko  ..      ..  so  ..

                y               y

The format of the buttons will be so that the larger character is the Hiragana in the regular PDF (the main alphabet system, generally curly) and the smaller character next to it is the katakana (used for foreign languages such as 「カメラ」for “camera”, generally blocky). In the katakana PDF, this is reversed with the hiragana being small and the katakana being big.

·         Above each button is the consonant sound for it with a coma separating for the modifiers dakuten (ﾞ) and handakuten(ﾟ) consonants. Handakuten(ﾟ)  is only used on the (H) characters to make the “p” sound. The accents get added to the top right of a character although sometimes they can be hard to spot

·         In brackets next to the consonant sounds are special consonant sounds for a specific vowel

·        Below to the left of each button is an indication of Youon modifiers that are accepted (e.g. “y” indicating “-ya/-yo/-yu” extensions to “-i” sounds e.g. ki+ya = kya are allowed)

·         Pressing the dakuten key after typing a vowel, “y” or “tsu” character will make it smaller on a phone kana keyboard

(つàっ,やàゃ – Used in words like “matte” 「まって」, “nya” 「にゃ」and “chotto" 「チョット」(written in katakana)) .

·         The “ha” character (は) is pronounced as “wa” when used as a particle (e.g. watashi wa… and …dewa arimasen)

·         Note that some similarities between characters are linked between katakana and hiragana

(e.g. tsu vs shi: つvsし, ツvsシ)

·         These charts will not go into depths of additional katakana character combinations that produce sounds that do not exist in hiragana (e.g. "tsa"「ツァ」and "va"「ヴァ」). For general usage, the basic character set, plus mini "y-" (youon), mini "tsu" (pause such as in がっこう for ga-kkou, or expression such as in きゃっ for "Kya!"), and dakuten and handakuten (for H series only)（へべぺ) is enough to get you for most words.

·         Generally じ is picked for a “ji” sound as opposed to theち character with a dakuten.  It seems the same applies with ず (It may confuse you with katakana-written foreign based words like "to jog" -> jogingusuru「ジョギングする」which in romaji may be written as zyogingusuru in the kunrei-shiki romanisation system)

·         I labelled “R” as “RL” because it’s more of a combination of the two sounds, generally with a stronger “L” sound towards the end of the pronounciation. Just what I hear. As for “fu” – The consonant doesn’t exist in English either, it’s more like a “hfu” than a “fu.” Don't use a strong accent on the "hf" constant either (use half the force you would usually use to restrict the airflow as an English speaker)

·         “wo” (を / ヲ)is pronounced as “o” (used as a particle) but is written as “wo” to differentiate it from (お/オ).

·       The katakana in the screenshot for (H) is wrong, thanks to /u/redditalme for spotting that out. The PDF has been updated/fixed.

TODO: Merge the charts together into one document... I'm lazy even though that's such an easy job

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