#29 What does 書く mean? ~ Real Hiragana's beauty"

2019. 1. 14

Hello everyone.

How are you?

It's kÜshi.

Thank you for coming here.

You can study about Japan with Japanese

sentences.

I hope you like this.

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So today's word is 書く

Reads:ka-ku
Means: to write

How to write 書👇
https://kakijun.jp/page-ms/kaku200.html

Example sentence:

・ひらがな は 縦 に 書く ため に 作ら れ た

/hiragana wa tate ni ka-ku tameni tsuku-ra re ta/

... Hiragana was made to be written vertically

Initially, all Japanese words, including kanji,

were written vertically.

So Hiragana was made to be written vertically as

well.

Hiragana is just like cursive of kanji, and therefore

they're easy to be written by connecting because

Chinese are written vertically.

And when they're written vertically, they also look

more beautiful and is easy to write.

But recently, Japanese sentences are written

horizontally, because English and other languages

are so and it's more convenient.

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Why is hiragana easy to write vertically??

As I said, hiragana is like cursive of kanji, so it has

connecting, called 流れ/naga-re/

like this:

If I write horizontally, the 流れ disappeares, so it's

not so easy to write horizontally, but hiragana has

the shape which can be in a square so they can

also be written horizontally naturally.

I talked too long XD

Don't you wait to study Japanese grammar??

Ok, so let's go!

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👉ひらがな/hiragana/

This means, you know, hiragana.

👉縦/tate/

This means a vertical

👉縦に書く/tate ni ka-ku/

書く means to write.
に makes words adverbs so 縦に means vertically.

So 縦に書く means "to write vertically"

For another example,

横に読む
/yoko ni yo-mu/
...to read horizontally

→横に is an adverb, which means "horizontally"
→読む means to read

👉ために/tameni/

This is usdd when you mean some purposes.

So 縦に書くために means like "for the purpose to

write vertically"

For example,

お金を得るために働く
/o-kane o e-ru tameni hatara-ku/
...I work to get money

→お金 means money
→得る means to get
→働く means to work

So the sentence means like "I work for the purpose

of getting money" and it means "I work TO get

money"

So you can translate ために as "to" like the

sentence.

👉作られた/tsuku-ra reta/

This is confusing because two forms are included:

a passive form and past form.

See the first English sentence.

You can see "Hiragana WAS MADE"

This is a passive and past form.

(1) How to make the passive form

First, I explain how to make the passive form.

You can make it by putting れる (reru)

after verbs. But verbs' forms, themselves, have to be

changed.

For example,

・読む
/yo-mu/
...to read

読まれる
/yo-mA RERU/
...to be read

・食べる
/ta-beru/
...to eat

食べられる
/ta-berA RERU/

・する
/suru/
...to do

される
/sA RERU/
...to be done

・見る
/mi-ru/
...to see

見られる
/mi-rA RERU/
...to be seen

・叩く
/tata-ku/
...to hit

叩かれる
/tata-kA RERU/
...to be hit

As you can see the ends of verbs are changed like

"U" → "A". And れる is put after that.

This is how to make the passive form, and there's

no exception.

(2)How to make the past form

You can make the past form by putting た after

verbs. But there're some exceptions.

For example,

・読む
/yo-mu/
...to read

読んだ
/yo-m DA/
...read

・食べる
/ta-beru/
...to eat

食べた
/ta-be TA/
...ate

・走る
/hashi-ru/
...to run

走った
/hashi-TTA/
...ran

・書く
/ka-ku/
...to write

書いた
/ka-i TA/
...wrote

・見る
/mi-ru/
...to see

見た
/mi-TA/
...saw

・聞く
/ki-ku/
...to hear

聞いた
/ki-i TA/
...heard

Basically by putting た after verbs, you can make

the past form, but there're confusing exceptions, so

I'd say getting used to it is much better than to

understand and remember the theories.

So 作られた is made like this:

作る
→ Change the end, "U"→"A" 👉 作ら

→Put れる after that 👉 作られる

→Put た to make passive form 👉 作られた

So 作られた means " ~was made"

That's all explanations.

Now you can translate the first sentence!

ひらがなは縦に書くために作られた this means like

"Hiragana was made for the purpose of being

written vertically"

And it means "Hiragana was made to be written

vertically"

So that's all today.

Thank you so much for reading.

Ask me if you want to know something more.

I hope this helps you.

See you next time!

Art of Kanji, yo-ji-juku-go👇https://oyenkushi.hatenadiary.jp/entry/2019/01/13/080045

Japanese textbook:

Essential Japanese Grammar

I really want to help you study Japanese, so I recommend this textbook which would also help you.