Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies

JAPANESE PRIMER

Japanese is a complex written language, using a combination of syllabaries, Chinese characters, and, occasionally, Latin characters. A syllabary is a group of phonetic characters that represent syllables. English relies on an alphabet of 26 letters, but Japanese relies on an alphabet of roughly 100 syllables, collectively known as kana. Many Japanese brand names, when transliterated into English, can be easily broken down into these syllables, such as “Su-zu-ki” or “To-yo-ta.” In all, the Japanese language relies on four unique sets of characters:

• Hiragana: A syllabary used to represent words of Japanese origin. Notice in Figure 3 how the characters flow like handwriting.

  Figure 3. Twenty-five of the 46 basic hiragana ...