Hingan Alphabet
So I came across the Hingan Alphabet on twitter this morning and immediately wanted to translate it so I could throw it at my friends. I figured it would be a good idea to post it here for those who play Eastern characters but don’t know Japanese. Enjoy my awful handwriting LMAO
It’s more or less an altered version of the Hiragana alphabet!
We got some familiar symbols: numbers and punctuation marks. The consonants aren’t quite as straightforward, however, as we don’t really have them in English so I’ll try and give a quick, vague explanation.
- The tsu (referred to as small tsu, or sokuon) indicates that the consonant that immediately follows it is preceded by a glottal stop and held for an additional syllable. For example, words like gakki (musical instrument) require the use of a double consonant, otherwise, you could make an entirely different meaning (gaki just means brat).
- The ya, yu, and yo are used to indicate glides, or semi-vowels. Remember when your waifu went “nyaaaaaa” in your favorite Doman animes? Well NOW YOU CAN WRITE THAT IN HINGAN. NOTHING IS STOPPING YOU.
I would heavily recommend looking at a chart since this is a bit difficult to take in at face value. But you more or less take a character that is ending in i from the first chart and then add the smaller character.
So say you want to say “hya”! Take the hi character, and then add the small ya after it. If you want to say “kyu”, take the ki character, and then add the small yu after it.
- The a, i, u, e, o are used for sounds that aren’t common within the Japanese language (or Hingan in this case, I guess) such as va, vi, wi, wu, etc. so probably will only matter for those wanting to spell the names of their characters that aren’t from the Far East.
For the w sounds, you have to take the u character from the first chart and add whichever character next. So to write wi, take the u character and add the i character after it. To write wu, take the u character again and add the u character after it. Similar to glides.
For the v sounds, you’ll have to use the u character again but add what we call dakuten, or tenten. If you look at the first chart and look at the characters that start with g, z, d, and b, you’ll notice they’re exactly the same character of the characters that start with k, s, t, and n but with a little mark on the right side. That’s the tenten! Use that same mark on the u character, and you have the v sound instead of the w sound.
This also works with glides. If you want to write vya, you use the u character with the tenten, and then add the small ya character to indicate that.
- ………that was not a quick explanation. UH… yea. If it’s difficult to understand still (which, prolly is considering my shit instructions) I would heavily recommend taking a look at hiragana charts and getting a better idea. Or better yet, ask me directly or a friend who knows Japanese! Because it’s only gonna get more difficult to understand from here on out LOL.
Next, we have long vowels on the right side of this chart. When the same vowel appears twice consecutively in a word, the two are pronounced as a continuous sound rather than as two separate vowels.
The 5 characters on the left side are plenty different though!
- Koto (not the instrument) and yori (not the name) are grammar particles, so I wouldn’t recommend using them unless you have a good idea of sentence structure. Pretty, though.
- Nari (也) has multiple readings. It’s used to express an exact sum of money, or a historical way of saying “to be”. I don’t think it’s their money symbol, considering they would use the yen (円) kanji to inticate that. So… uh… Who Know?
- The next one was a bit difficult to read, but it seems to be the 候 kanji, which is a literal reading of seasons, weather, climate, etc.
- The very bottom far left character is read as 々, which is an iteration mark, meaning that the sound of the previous kanji (or a sound similar to it) before it should be repeated. An example would be 色々(iroiro, various) or 早々(hayabaya, “promptly”) It also can be found in names.
I hope those explanations helped out a bit! I’m really hoping a font with the Hingan alphabet comes soon, it’d make things plenty easier I’m sure. Really looking forward to seeing folks who Hingan characters putting their names together! It’s honestly a super pretty alphabet. @_@
Thank you so much to @chelonate who helped me out with some of the translation!! You saved me dang booty….
