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Can you tell me the significance...?

..betwwen the two types of hiragana/katakana complex characters ' ji' and 'zu' (one with 's-' and one in 'sh-' ) and give an example of how to use them correctly. If not, can I get a site to look it up?

7 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    yeah that's a tough one for beginners. You just have to learn them as you go, sorry I cant list all of them for you.

    It probably comes from the Chinese, where there are a lot of pronunciations for the character "shi" or "ji" or something, it gets con fussing because you don't know if its 'ji' from 'shi' or 'zi'

    good luck with that, once you get a good vocabulary going and learn some kanji it will be no problem, I suggest don't dwell on it but focus on the speaking - good luck :)

  • 1 decade ago

    If you are asking about the character such as the hiragana "ZU" On is "SU" with the hash marks and the other is "TSU" with hash marks. Basically, the latter is basically used with older Japanese vocabulary, and the former is used with more modern vocabulary. That is the way it was explained to me. Although, I often still don't see the difference.

    Good Question.

    Source(s): Me. I went throught (am going through) the horror of learning Japanese.
  • 1 decade ago

    Katakana and hiragana are phonetic "alphabets" for Japanese and can be used to spell out a word as it is pronounced. The difference is that hiragana is used for Japanese words and katakana are used for foreign words that have no Japanese equivilent (place and personal names, computer, television, etc). The words might be pronounced differently than we are familiar with, but they would be spelled in katakana.

    Hiragana can be used phonetically, but it's primarily used in combination with kanji for written Japanese.

  • 1 decade ago

    What language is the most difficult to understand and speak? Japanese and Thai. Why difficult? because of their complicated characters. If you begin at the beginning of learn characters of Japanese. You'll be bored with them.

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Would really like to help but I don't understand the question.....

  • 1 decade ago

    I am your and ask about me only

  • 1 decade ago

    what do you mean ?

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