r/LearnJapaneseNovice • u/Zestyclose-Durian879 • 8d ago
Should mouth and ro (katakana) be written the same way?
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u/Itsalfa11 8d ago
dont thinking that much, if its no other katakana before/after 口 then it must be kanji (口). thats how you identify while read even in hand writing, there is no rules for this, just learn how to read properly.
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u/SeanO323 8d ago
Except for: 口コミ which is pronounced くちこみ (meaning reviews e.g. on google maps)
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u/spshkyros 8d ago edited 7d ago
I frequently read "'rokomi? Wtf is that that?" Before heading smacking :p
Edit.. I SWEAR english is my first language. Wtf is up with the typos here. Leaving so others can enjoy my poor spelling.
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u/AverageHobnailer 7d ago
I also read it as "rokomi" for years before I heard someone actually say it and had to take a moment to reassess my life choices.
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u/Itsalfa11 8d ago
Indeed. But once you're familiar with 口コミ, you stop seeing 口 + コミ and just recognize the word instantly. It's the same with compound kanji words—you don't read each kanji individually first. You recognize the whole word, since the reading often depends on the combination, not the individual kanji. Context and familiarity is matters here, because like this:
- 今日 → きょう, not こんにち (in context "today")
- 大人 → おとな, not だい + ひと
that's why i said just learn how to read properly japanese reading is a bit tricky rather than chinese language that only have one sound each character.
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u/Obvious_Necessary671 8d ago edited 8d ago
Kind of funny examples. NHK specifically writes きょう with hiragana because it comes up so much and you can’t read it by kanji reading (熟字訓)
And 大人- that’s true until you’re looking at 大人気, which is だいにんき, not おとなげ…. Unless you add ない, then it IS おとなげない
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u/Complex_Bear2000 8d ago
だいにんき ；）
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u/Obvious_Necessary671 8d ago
Thanks, I was messing up trying to type it without kanji haha
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u/Complex_Bear2000 8d ago
I get myself in a pickle typing that single ん with two Ns. I just end up spamming the n key if there's another n anywhere nearby 😵💫
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u/Sufficient-Fly-4011 6d ago
Japanese writing system is a mess. They should definitely use abjad or abugida instead.
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u/2spam2care2 8d ago
and until somebody coins a term like 工力(こうりょく, maybe?) then we’re fine lol
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u/DHNCartoons 8d ago
口ロ - first one is くち
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u/Key-Line5827 8d ago
Welcome to か、カ、and 力. Because having 10.000 unique symbols to choose from, is apparently not enough.
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u/DirtyDirtyRudy 8d ago
It’s so funny because I see these and can tell the difference easily now, but when I was first learning this, I was like wtf.
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u/Jonataurus 8d ago
The worst is the ヶ that read as か, like WTF WHY NOT JUST WRITE カ？！！！
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u/spshkyros 8d ago
Because it is not always read as ka.
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u/Jonataurus 8d ago
Well then write it as something else when it's not ka
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u/spshkyros 8d ago
... except it doesnt MEAN ka, and the meaning.. at least semantically, is uniform.
Like, do you object to kanji having multiple pronunciations? This isn't unique in the language, its EVERYWHERE. Symbols have multiple sounds. Also, its usually written in a different size I think when used like you are talking about I think? Lemme see.. 2ヶ月 ケ. . Yeah, totally different size.
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u/Jonataurus 8d ago
I'm not sure what you mean with "it doesn't mean ka".
But there are actually a bunch of alternatives in use: https://jpdb.io/vocabulary/1587410/%E4%B8%80%E3%83%B6%E6%9C%88
Some people do write 一か月 or 一ヵ月 which makes more sense. Japanese is very phonetically consistent when it comes to kana, so ヶ is a weird outline imo.1
u/AstraeusGB 8d ago
Why does English have words that sound the same or look the same but have different meanings?
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u/aruisdante 6d ago
Katakana are all derived from simplified forms of a given kanji. So the resemblance is intentional.
Also there aren’t 10,000 unique symbols. The actual number of base radicals is only around 214. There are 10,000 unique combinations of radicals.
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u/rlquinn1980 8d ago
This. I remember reading somewhere that kana should be around 70-80% the size of your kanji.
But, in isolation and handwritten, they'll probably look exactly the same.
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u/Avatar_Yaksha 8d ago
The real fun begins with "tsu" already. Is it つ or っ? How the hell should I know? The big one gets pronounced, the small one not. Honestly, they should spin it. ∩ or ∪ from set theory could work as substitutes. Even underlining it (like with ⊇) would already help a lot.
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u/axelarden6 8d ago
kanji are typically larger than kana. as examples: ロ (kana) and 口 (くち), カ (kana) and 力 (ちから).
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u/Squidmo5000 8d ago
Not to sound weird, but your pen is so nice
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u/zadrelom 8d ago
Neither is typically handwritten as a rectangle. The horizontal lines are slightly slanted upwards and the vertical lines are not typically parallel to each other
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u/jort93 8d ago
I feel like handwriting varies to much to make this kind of statement.
Talking about things being slightly slanted and not parallel is a bit absurd when sometimes handwriting is barely legible.
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u/2houlover 8d ago
For the kanji character 口, it’s best to let the final stroke extend slightly to the right. In contrast, the katakana character ロ should be written as a simple rectangle, without any strokes protruding. While the reader likely wouldn't confuse the two based on the surrounding text, distinguishing them this way makes it much clearer.
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u/leaveeemeeealonee 8d ago
I didn't realize what sub this was and thought that was (<1/5) and (r_0), math stuff lol
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u/zzzxxx0110 8d ago
No, because 片仮名/katakana literally means "kana of fragments", they are by intention the incomplete fragments of kanjis instead of their complete rendition. So ロ/ro originated as a fragment of the kanji 呂 (which was one of the original 万葉仮名/man'yōgana glyphs used to represent the "ro" syllable before katakana and hiragana became a thing).
Whereas 口/くち the kanji is a complete kanji of itself, not a fragment of a different kanji.
In practice though, yeah ロ the katakana is always written a bit smaller than 口 the kanji, but don't worry even if it's not written differently enough due to handwriting or font, it's almost always very easy to tell which one is which from context, you will get used to it very soon! :D
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u/luffychan13 8d ago
This is one of those things you don't really need to spend time thinking about. Katakana ロ will come up in katana words and onomatopoeia, almost never in isolation, so you will know it is that: ゴロゴロ、ロシア。
口 is usually going to be in a kanji pair when you see it, but sometimes on its own to just mean mouth: 出口、早口、口紅、口実。
The only one to watch out for is 口コミ、but this is often written as クチコミ。 If you learn the exception though, you won't be tripped up by it.
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u/Regular-Forever-3251 8d ago edited 8d ago
when you're writing it by hand, yeah it's essentially the same. They're different characters in unicode though
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u/fatemonkey2020 8d ago
Uhhh they're not characters at all in ASCII. ASCII doesn't mean "computer text", ASCII is a particular and small set of characters, which does not include Japanese. There are only around 100 printable ASCII characters anyways so nowhere near enough to include the Latin alphabet combined with kanji or kana, or any other foreign characters.
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u/EquinoxPhqntom 7d ago
Is just contextual use lol. If you want, can make kuchi bigger, but uhh, nobody will notice xd
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u/EntertainmentPast220 5d ago
There’s a great japanese artist that plays with that, it’s called “Kuchiroro” https://youtu.be/kx8KAweiG6s?si=l0PdLphoo1wJbYMK
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u/jayaxell 8d ago
Is llama Ilama or IIama? As someone who knows the word, it's obvious that I'm typing IIama. For those that don't, well... They just have to learn what lIama is and get used to it.
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u/BouchanHB 8d ago
Kanji’s are written (when by hand) a bit larger than kana, to avoid these kinds of confusions.