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New guy here. Just wondering why I see the は hiragana as being pronounced both as ha and wa? Sorry in advance if this has been brought up before but I didn’t see a search bar anywhere.
AnonymousIf even Textfugu hasn’t covered this extremely basic thing, I will be so disappointed.
As a particle, it’s pronounced “wa”.
As part of a word, it’s pronounced “ha”.
For example: はな は さく = hana wa saku = flowers bloom
Textfugu does cover this.
http://www.textfugu.com/season-2/particle-ha/6-2/#top
Where is it you’re seeing it pronounced two different ways? If you’ve not even reached Season 2 yet, I’m just curious as to where else you’re coming across it.
On a related note, I’m not fond of the way the lessons are indexed: in the contents page they’re listed purely by their name. That may sound the obvious choice, but it’s not great – it would be more helpful if the names told you exactly (or at least a rough summary of) what the lesson is about e.g. instead of calling it just “Developing a sense of identity”, you could at least reference 私 or “I” or something similar. Some lessons like “な Adjectives” do what they say on the tin, but there are a number that don’t; it would make it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for if there was a better indication of the contents. With the “Identity” example again, a few pages in the title is “The many ways to say “I” ” – now that’s a *much* better title for the lesson as a whole, no? :P
One thing that frustrates me about oh-so-many Japanese texts is how often they use は in some new grammar construct, but never ever mention whether it’s “ha”. Or “wa”.
When it’s used in grammar, it tends to be “wa” more often than not, though.
In lesson 2 right now but this question came up when I saw a how 2 japan guide and the writer kept called wa as ha in every context
Mr – Agree 100%. Many times I’ve got to check a grammar point & it has taken too long to find it due to the poor chapter titles.
Which Japanese texts *don’t* reference the difference between ha and wa? I thought that’d be a major thing you need to know? That and wo/o and he/e (and to a lesser extent small katakana ke).
How do you (while reading) tell the difference? I know it’s kind of a stupid question but…
Once you get some practice you’ll be able to tell when it is being used as a particle, wa, & when it is part of a word, ha. e.g. 私は.
Kanji does a good job at separating words out and letting you know which bits are vocab and which bits are grammar. Once you get some practice under your belt you’ll know fairly automatically!
There are still some times where I’m thinking “Wait… is that the *particle* は, or this one long word here?”; a lot of kana all together can make it a little difficult to parse the sentence, especially if you don’t know some of the words.
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