Help With Hiragana Spelling???

Question

I've recently downloaded a "learn Japanese" program and i was just wondering about this because i can't seem to figure it out. What i'm spelling is supposed to be only in hiragana characters, and some words, like iie and hai are spelled the way they sound, while there are some, like ohayo gozaimasu, which has a character where there should be a space between the words, and konbanwa, where the "wa" character is replaced with the "ha" character. I'm very confused. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could tell me why this happens and how i can know which way to type the sounds. thanks.

Answer 1

rkuef is right. It sounds like your program doesn't start at the very basics. I can tell you though that some sounds in Japanese are sort of "squished" together to sound a bit more natural, and when "ha" is the character, but it is pronounced "wa", the wa is a subject marker...whatever is before it is the topic of the sentance. Also, in true Japanese writing there is no spaces at all between words, that is why they have things like topic markers and question marker (ka), etc. They put spaces between phrases for beginning learners.

Answer 2

Unfortunately you've downloaded a program before you learned the rules of Japanese spelling.

In Japanese you do not write "ohayo gozaimasu", you write "ohayou gozaimasu". It is a longer o sound then normal, which is why there is a u there. And, in Japanese, no spaces are ever used in writing.

For konbanwa and konnichiwa the Japanese spell it with the "ha" character. Ha is pronounced wa when it's working as a particle. A particle is something that brings together the Japanese sentence and makes it understandable. Konbanwa and konnichiwa literally mean "This evening is" and "This afternoon is", respectfully. Wa is like "is" in English.

Unless you have a very, very keen ear you're not going to know how to correctly type the long sounds until you learn how to spell the words. In hiragana here is the rule:
Long o sound is always written as ou. Like Ohayou gozaimasu.
Long e sound is always written as ei. Eigo.
Long a sounds are just aa. Okaasan.
Long i sounds are just ii. Iie.

Answer 3

this is a pen
kore wa pen desu. (you have to pronounce like this)
kore ha pen desu. (you have to write like this in hiragana)

'wa' is particle. 'ha' particle must pronounce 'wa'.
this is very difficult even japanese children.
all children misspell 'wa' instead of 'ha'.
you just have to use to it.