Words to practice for today:
| 微笑み（ほほえみ） smile | 頬（ほほ） cheek |
| ほら！ Look! | 他（ほか） other |
| 札幌（さっぽろ） Sapporo | 帆立貝（ほたてがい） scallop |
| 本（ほん） book | ぼろぼろ raggedy |
Hiragana for Day 40
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ほ is
pronounced /ho/.
「ほ」はは行hagyouの５番目（ごばんめ）のかなです。は行はひらがなの６（ろく）行目です。
Words to practice for today:
|
半濁点（はんだくてん） make ほ into ぽ /po/, written more largely as ぽ.
Make sure to distinguish between ほ and は.
微笑み means a smile, the verb is 微笑む（ほほえむ）. The verb 笑う（わらう） laugh is often used as smile, too. It wouldn't surprise me to hear people argue that 微笑む is smile and 笑う is laugh, but in actual usage, 笑う is often used.
頬 is usually written in ひらがな. ほっぺた also means cheek.
ほら! Look! See that?!
他 is other (noun), 他の is the adjective.
札幌, the name of the famous beer is actually the name of the capital of 北海道（ほっかいどう） Hokkaidou, the northernmost large island, and the largest island. The name 札幌 is from アイヌ語（あいぬご） Ainu, the langauge of the アイヌ（あいぬ） Ainu, a 先住民（せんじゅうみん） before living people, or indigenous people. The characters were adopted for the sound of the アイヌ語 name. Like many 先住民 around the world, the アイヌ have been pressed nearly to extinction. Evidently, there has been a resurgence in learning the 文化（ぶんか） culture, but language learning is second-language learning rather than native language (doubtlessly for the most part, anyway). アイヌ語, like Korean, Mongolian and other アルタイ語（あるたいご） Altaic languages, has a grammatical structure similar to 日本語（にほんご） Japanese. Because of the lack of cognates (words with the same origin) between 日本語 and other アルタイ語, however, a definite link is debatable.
A 帆（ほ） is a sail, 立て（たて） is stand and 貝（かい） is shellfish. The 帆立貝 seems to hoist its sail to swim through the waters.
本 generally means book, but it also means printed bound material in general. 漫画（まんが） comic books, アニメ（あにめ from English animation） cartoons, 雑誌（ざっし） and 新聞（しんぶん） can all be called 本. The word for "book," used only when necessary to distinguish it from the others is 単行本（たんこうぼん）.
ぼろぼろ is all torn up or raggedy.
Copyright 06/26/99 Benjamin Barrett
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