Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
In an alphabet, each symbol stands for one sound, either a vowel or a consonant. In a syllabary, each symbol stands for a whole syllable, usually a consonant-vowel pair. So, in Japanese, there is no separate letter for "M." There are 5 symbols, ma, mi, mu, me, mo. (in Hiragana, まみむめも。) Korean also uses a syllabary, Hangul, but the Korean syllabary was designed to be remarkably consistent and logical, based on phonetic sub-symbols known as Jamo. |
Thanks Nekokami,
It sounds like a syllabary would be lot easier to read than words written with an alphabet. Does the Japanese syllabary cover the full range of sounds within Japanese words or is the syllabary just an approximation of how words sound? In other words are their sounds that aren't covered with these syllables?