ABSTRACT
Japanese has three types of script: hiragana, katakana and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic symbols and each script carries one-syllable-sound, whereas kanji, which was imported to Japan from China in the fifth and sixth centuries, carries both sounds and meanings. Hiragana and katakana have an identical set of 46 basic characters. Hiragana is used for the grammatical element. The Japanese language has five vowel sounds: a, i, u, e and o. Japanese sounds are either a single vowel, a combination of a consonant and vowel, or of a consonant, sound plus a vowel, with one exception, n, which does not take any vowel. When the sounds u and i appear between unvoiced sounds or at the end of a word and after an unvoiced sound, they are devoiced. Japanese. The first and second syllables always have different pitch. Some words have the same pronunciation but a different high-low accent.
