Temari
Kai Glossaries
Japanese Ordering Characters / Katakana
These characters are used in the
Japanese writing system to indicate the specific ordering of steps in a
sequence. This the parallel to English/Roman languages where one would
follow in order 1, 2, 3, …. or a, b, c, …. ). These Katakana characters that are
the most often used in the Japanese books to indicate the order of
stitching when following pattern diagrams. There are a few books
that use Hiragana characters, some of which are the same as Katakana,
but not all. If you have a book that does not match these on the
patterns, this is why.
Character
|
Romanji
|
English
Equivalent
|
English
Pronunciation
|
| イ |
i
|
1 or A
|
ee as in
"beet"
|
ロ
|
ro
|
2 or B
|
ro as in
"row"
|
| ハ |
ha
|
3 or C
|
ha as in
"hah"
|
| ニ |
ni
|
4 or D
|
nee as in
"knee"
|
| ホ |
ho
|
5 or E
|
ho as in
"hole"
|
| ヘ |
he
|
6 or F
|
he as in
"heat"
|
| ト |
to
|
7 or G
|
to as in
"toe"
|
| チ |
chi
|
8 or H
|
chi as in
"cheek"
|
| リ |
ri
|
9 or I
|
ree as in
"reek"
|
| ヌ |
nu
|
10 or J
|
nu as in
"newt"
|
| ル |
ru
|
11 or K
|
ru as in
"ruby"
|
| ヲ or オ |
o
|
12 or L
|
o as in "oat"
|
The Japanese writing system is
very complex, based on several sets of characters that serve different
purposes. The main sets are Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji
characters are pictoral ideograms (i.e. little pictures of
ideas) originally coming from the Chinese and adapted to Japanese
culture. Katakana and
Hiragana were added to "customize" the system into Japanese culture;
both are sets of phonetic symbols used to build words or
concepts. Hiragana are most commonly used for native Japanese words
that did not have a Kanji counterpart; Katakana are most often used to
indicate foreign words originating outside of native Japanese
culture. More information
about the Japanese writing system can be found here.
Special thanks to Milly
Koh and Ai Mizuta. Edited,
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Last updated 9/2005 © From 1998 inclusive
G.Thompson, M. Koh, M. Mizuta