A Mnemonic Device To Remember Japanese Dictionary Order
By thomas on Oct 18, 2007 in Japanese
The Japanese dictionary order is a, ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, ya, ra, wa, n.
I’ve been studying Japanese for a long time, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned the above dictionary order for the Japanese syllabary. The main reason for this is that I mostly use an electronic dictionary to look up words. With an electronic dictionary I can just mindlessly type the word in and it will show me the results instantly. There’s no need to learn the dictionary order for this.
A couple months ago I bought a paper dictionary because I found that my electronic dictionary gave insufficient or no definitions for certain advanced terms I was looking up. My electronic dictionary was good for most things, but I needed something to supplement it for those times when I came across a tricky word.
I quickly found out that looking things up in a Japanese dictionary can be slow work if you don’t know the dictionary order (an issue that is starting to come up in my Pali study too). I knew generally that “ka”, “sa” and “ta” were near the beginning and “ra” was near the end, but I didn’t have the exact order memorized. I had to guess each time I opened the paper dictionary up.
I wanted to speed up my lookups so I invented a little mnemonic device to help me memorize the Japanese dictionary order (and keep me cognizant of the plight of teachers everywhere). Here it is:
Here is the order in chart form:
| a | i | u | e | o |
| ka | ki | ku | ke | ko |
| sa | shi | su | se | so |
| ta | chi | tsu | te | to |
| na | ni | nu | ne | no |
| ha | hi | fu | he | ho |
| ma | mi | mu | me | mo |
| ya | yu | yo | ||
| ra | ri | ru | re | ro |
| wa | ||||
| n |
Once more the mnemonic device is:
After a couple of days repeating this mantra every time I did a lookup, it became second nature. Now I’m a Japanese dictionary pro!
Do you have any mnemonic devices that you use to remember the dictionary order of the language you’re studying? Tell me about it in the comments!
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Well, my pocket dictionary has no thumb grip or whatsover, so using it can be a bit tricky. Especially when I’m in class and need to luck up something fast. But my normal dictionary has a very nice thumb grip which give the first two letters of the word where the page is starting with.
Rmss | Oct 18, 2007 | Reply
My paper dictionary has a thumb grip too, but I was still pretty slow at using it because I didn’t know the dictionary order. For example if I wanted to look up an “n” word like “nuru”, and I thumbed to “h”, I didn’t know whether to go backwards or forwards to find it. So I had to stop and “look both ways” before thumbing further. Once I found the “nu” section, I’d have to figure out where the “r” section was to get to my word. The longer the word was, the longer it took me to find it. Now that I’ve learned the order, I’m pretty fast at looking up Japanese words.
You have a bit of a head start since Spanish dictionary order is almost the same as English (and I’m guessing Dutch too). Spanish has more letters than English though, doesn’t it?
And good luck with your new blog! I’ve subscribed to the RSS feed and I’ll be reading it closely!
thomas | Oct 18, 2007 | Reply
Well, Spanish has 29 letters, which includes ch, ll and ñ. But it follows a very logical order in my opinion (Dutch and English have exactly the same alphabet, but some people tend to say that ij, ui, eu, etc. are seperate letters which need their own place).
Rmss | Oct 18, 2007 | Reply
I find songs or chants to be more helpful to me than phrases or sentences with each word beginning with the next letter. I’m pretty visual and with a sentence that is unrelated to the alphabet except for the first letter, I end up visualizing the sentence and have to backtrack and force myself to visualize the alphabet letters rather than the sentence meaning. It feels like double the work for the way my brain operates. I suppose its a learning style thing, and I always enjoy hearing what works for different people.
eclexia | Oct 19, 2007 | Reply
Rmss: When they teach the Dutch alphabet in school, do they teach it as having 26 letters? or more than that?
eclexia: Songs and chants are a great way to memorize things. Recently, in my Pali studies, I’ve run into a lot of verb conjugation charts. It’s been really tough for me to memorize them, especially in the case of irregular verbs, so I started to chant them rhythmically and it’s working! I wonder if I busted out the guitar and made songs if it would be even easier to learn sentences/charts.
thomas | Oct 19, 2007 | Reply
thomas: they teach the standard letters and the combinations and their sounds (for example: ij is pronounced like the y in why). But officially it has only 26 letters where the other ‘letters’ are just combinations with seperate sounds.
Rmss | Oct 19, 2007 | Reply
Rmss : Thanks for answering my question. I was curious to know if it was the same or not.
thomas | Oct 24, 2007 | Reply
I tend to use songs or chants too.
For the Japanese dictionary order, I sing it to the tune of Frere Jacques:
Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, dormez vous? dormez vous?
Aka Sata, Naha Maya, rawa n? rawa n?
adjusting | Nov 5, 2007 | Reply
I took Japanese all 4 years I was in high school, and continued in college… My HS teacher taught us a song that went something like this ” A I U E O, Ka Ki Ku Ke Ko, dare kaga dokoka de hanashite iru… Sa Shi Su Se So, Ta Chi Tsu Te To, dare kaga dokoka de…
I have since lost most of my vocabulary, but the song is very fresh in my mind, and I’ve gotten very used to looking things up on my dictionary. Little silly songs like that help a lot more than most people think! I never thought 14 years ago, that this song would be so fresh in my mind after all that time…
Abi (Ramos) McFiggins | Nov 11, 2007 | Reply
@adjusting: Frere Jacques! That’s awesome. You can even sing it in rounds :)
@Abi: “Someone, somewhere is talking.” That song radiates Truth! It sounds like it takes a bit of time to get through the whole song though.
thomas | Nov 22, 2007 | Reply
Hey, I like this idea! These sorts of memory aides aren’t covered enough in language learning I think.
I noticed it in a children’s book I often read to my kids, “Guri and Gura’s A-I-U-E-O Book”, and decided to incorporate the idea in to a short course in Japanese I’m giving at http://eduFire.com
Brett Fyfield | Feb 8, 2009 | Reply
Ah… Kana Symbols! Take Note How Many You Read / Write (None??)
Take the initial of each word and you have the order.
Annabel398 | Feb 10, 2009 | Reply
@Annabel398: nice one!
thomas | Feb 10, 2009 | Reply
Darn it! Just discovered your “Kindergarten School Teachers…” mnemonic. I wish I’d found it years ago! All this time, I’m STILL having trouble with dictionary order. Now I’ll never forget it. Very clever. I wrote that sentence in the inside cover of my dictionary. Thanks.
Lloyd | Sep 12, 2009 | Reply
Thanks so much for this tip!! I am the same have been studying for 3 years and haven’t known the order :/ thanks so much
Adelaide | Nov 23, 2011 | Reply
Kana Signs Take Note How Much You Read/Write
I got that from a book by P.G. O’Neill. It’s been stuck in my head for 22 years!
Edward J. Wood | Apr 10, 2012 | Reply