Alex
Problems with hieroglyphics when writing. こんにちは ! I recently started learning Japanese and faced one problem. When I want to write the word こんにちは using hiragana, I get a slightly different result こんいちわ. The third and fifth symbols are not right. I started looking for information and realized that the third hieroglyph should be "ni" and the last should be "ha". In other words, if I want get the correct result, I must write "konnnichiha", not "konnichiwa". Same situation with word こんばんは. I need write "konbanha" for correct result, not "konbanwa". Because of this, I have difficulty with writing words. Please, could someone clarify this question? Maybe I didn't take into account some important aspect? ありがとう!
Sep 23, 2017 3:56 PM
Answers · 5
1
こんにちは is correct. こんばんは is correct. But pronunciation of "は" is "wa" in this case. Some Japanese write こんにちわ. It's just fun! こんにち、わっ('O'*)
September 24, 2017
1
Alex, はof こんにちは is a postpositional particle. It originally works like わたし「は」or これ「は」, which means that the word followed by は is a subject of the sentence. こんにち means today or present, and こんにちは is actually a part of a sentence, such as "today is a nice day" or so. That is why は can't be replaced by わ, and can't be written "ha" alphabetically, instead, pronounced わ and written "wa". Does it make sense?
September 23, 2017
Hi Alex, those aren't hieroglyphs, though ... characters or kana :-). Japanese kana spelling is highly regular with three common particles being the exception: は, へ, and を. Normally these would be pronounced as ha, he and wo, but as particles they are pronounced wa, e and o. Well, in singing o becomes wo again. And that's it - the rest of the spelling is regular - well, if you forget about the little complication of a few thousand kanji :-).
September 25, 2017
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