Japanese

Japanese Dict: https://www.japandict.com

Alphabet

1. Kanji. every character represents an idea or concept.
2. Hiragana. in combination with kanji.
3. Katakana. represents foreign words, places, onomatopoeias, etc.

onomatopeia 象声 is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. E.g. tick tock, di da.

音読み 訓読み

One single kanji may have more than one different readings: on'yomi, kun'yomi, and nanori.

• 音読み. On'yomi. reading is coming from the original Chinese pronunciation of the character.
• 訓読み. Kun'yomi. reading is coming from the pronunciation of a native Japanese word.
• 名乗り. Nanori. almost exclusively in Japanese names.

训读在使用汉字的语言中都是存在的，比如汉语中的 菸 字，音读 yu，训读 yan，训读的本字为 烟。
吴语中的 二，训读为 liahn，本字为两。
类似地，英语中的 etc. 音读为 et cetera，训读为 and so on 或 and so forth。

Pitch accent

Japanese pitch accent is a feature that distinguishes words by accenting particular morae.

scalar pitch

1. 頭高 atamadaka, first mora high and the following ones low
2. 中高 nakadaka, convex
3. 尾高 odaka, last mora high and the succeeding particle low
4. 平板 heiban, flat