Hiragana cards (i-ro-ha karuta)
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Every Japanese child begins to learn to read and write by learning two
syllabaries: hiragana and katakana Both syllabaries contain 48 syllables or
sounds. In theory,every Japanese word can be expressed in either hiragana
or katahana but, in practice, this is unworkable: Since there are so many
homophones in the Japanese language, ideographs (characters) are essential
to the comprehension of a written phrase. Katakana is used when writing
foreign words arranged in Japanese syllables - e.g. gu/ra/su (glass) - and
for certain Japanese dialect and onomatopoeic words. Hiragana is used for
some Japanese words and, most importantly for the inflexions that
constitute Japanese grammar. Japanese children begin by reading simple
passages written in hiragana only (with katahana where appropriate). After
the first year of school, they are rapidly introduced, in a systematic way,
to ideographs. By the time they leave school, they know all the standard
ideographs and use hiragana only for inflexion and so on. In recent years
the number of ideographs in general use has been gradually reduced to
around 2,000. Whenever old or non-standard ideographs are used in books or
newspapers (full dictionaries list some 40,000 ideographs), the publishers
often place hiragana beside them as a guide to the correct reading.
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