by combining two appropriate characters into a new compound. The pronunciation of a character when it is used by itself is usually different from its pronunciation in compounds. A character will generally keep the same pronunciation in any compound in which it appears, however.
For example, the character
nounced HIGASHI when it is used by itself. compound
is proIn the
and in any other com-
pound in which it is used, it is pronounced It is quite easy to distinguish the characters from the kana . The kana are w r i t t e n with at most four s e p a r a t e lines, or strokes, and usually with only two or three
The Chinese characters, on the other
hand, except for the word one, which is just one h o r i z o n t a l line —— , have a minimum of two strokes and usually many more. These are kana :
These a r e c h a r a c t e r s :
Since kana will appear at the end of each w o r d to give it grammar, a Japanese sentence w i l l look like this:
Japanese books and newspapers, being in s e n tence form, are written with both the characters and 19