Help:Japanese

Japanese-language Characters
See: Enabling East Asian characters for other East Asian Character sets.

Throughout Wikipedia, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters are used in specific articles. Many computers with English or other Western operating systems don't show them by default.

If you see boxes, question marks or senseless letters mixing into the first part, you still do not have support for East Asian characters.

Check for Support
1. This is Japanese text as it appears on Japanese websites and Wikipedia:
 * すべての人間は、生まれながらにして自由であり、
 * かつ、尊厳と権利と について平等である.
 * 人間は、理性と良心とを授けられており、
 * 互いに同 胞の精神をもって行動しなければならない.

2. Compare it to this picture of what it should look like:



Windows 95, 98, ME and NT
Your system should offer to download Asian fonts by default while viewing pages in those languages |? Otherwise update your system manually with these language support packs: here

Windows 2000

 * Instructions for Windows 2000

Windows XP and Server 2003
The Windows CD-Rom is needed while installing support for East Asian languages.
 * Instructions for Windows XP and Server 2003

Mac OS X
Font packages at apple.com

Linux Fedora
Install the appropriate ttfonts packages.

For Fedora Core 3, the packages are ttfonts-zh_TW (traditional chinese), ttfonts-zh_CN (simplified chinese), ttfonts-ja (japanese) and ttfonts-ko (korean). E.g. 'yum install ttfonts-ko'

Unicode Japanese Fonts
List of free Japanese fonts

Japanese orthography
Japanese text is written with a mixture of kanji and the two kana syllabaries. Almost all kanji originated in China, and all have one or more meanings and pronunciations. Kanji compounds generally derive their meaning from the component kanji. For example, Tokyo (東京) is written with two kanji: "east" (東) + "capital" (京). The name was chosen because Tokyo was to be the capital of Japan to the east of the existing capital, Kyoto. (There are some other kanji compounds, called "ateji", in which the kanji were selected mainly for sound, not meaning, but these are rare.)

Centuries ago, the kana syllabaries — hiragana and katakana — derived their shape from particular kanji pronounced in the same way. However, unlike kanji, kana have no meaning, and are used only to represent sounds. Hiragana are used to write native Japanese words. For example, the Japanese word for "to do" (する suru) is written with two hiragana: す (su) + る (ru). Katakana are generally used to write loanwords. For example, daburu was borrowed from the English "double", and is written with three katakana: ダ (da) + ブ (bu) + ル (ru).

"Roman characters" have also recently become popular for certain purposes in Japanese (see rōmaji), but their use is still very limited.

Japanese pronunciation
Throughout Wikipedia, a modified version of the widely-accepted Hepburn romanization is used to represent Japanese sounds in Roman characters. The following are some basic rules for using Hepburn to pronounce Japanese words accurately.



Vowels

 * The vowels a, e, i and o are generally pronounced as in Spanish or Italian.
 * The vowel u is similar to that of the oo in moon, although without lip-rounding.
 * Japanese vowels can either be long (bimoraic) or short (monomoraic). The macron denotes lengthening.
 * Long a, o and u sounds are usually written with macrons as ā, ō and ū.
 * Long e and i sounds are usually written ee and ii, but in neologisms are instead written with macrons as ē and ī.

Japanese vowels can be approximated in English as follows:

Moraic n

 * An n before a consonant is moraic (its own mora).
 * A moraic n followed by a vowel or y is written n'.
 * The moraic n has various phonetic realisations:
 * Before an n, t, d or r, it is pronounced.
 * Before a k or g, it is pronounced.
 * Before an m, b or p, it is pronounced as . It is written as m in some versions of Hepburn, but as n in Wikipedia’s modified Hepburn.
 * It is otherwise pronounced as or.

Consonants

 * Consonants other than f and r are generally pronounced as in English.
 * The consonant f is bilabial: the teeth are not used, and the sound is much softer than the "f" of English.
 * The consonant r is similar to Korean r. To an English speaker's ears, its pronunciation lies somewhere between a flapped t (as in American and Australian English better and ladder), an l and a d.
 * Double consonants (kk, tt, etc.) basically indicate a slight, sharp pause before and stronger emphasis of the following sound, more similar to Italian than English. Spelling anomalies:
 * double ch is written as tch (sometimes cch),
 * double sh is written as ssh and
 * double ts is written as tts.