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Hold on to your pants… we’re going in!

Today, we’re going to learn a couple of Japanese characters. Due to the way they work, you’ll get a few for free, too.

If you watch the video for ‘Jump’ by Madonna, you’ll notice a few advertising signs behind her, written in Japanese. I’ll pick one for today… I think it’s white with red writing and to her left (our right) it says:

ビデオ・DVD

The characters you need are:

ビ - bi
デ - de
オ - o

This spells ‘bideo’ (pronounced bi-day-oh), meaning ‘video’. Another sound the Japanese don’t have is a ‘v’ sound.

You’ll notice a couple of those characters have little ‘quote’ marks, called ‘dakuten’, next to them. They’re sound modifiers. The plain characters are:

ヒ - hi
テ - te

So that’s five sounds you can make already - ヒ hi, ビ bi, テ te, デ de, オ o. We’ll add one more:

レ - re

This gives you a vocabulary of two words:

テレビ - terebi - TV
ビデオ - bideo - video

Note that these are real Japanese words. The Japanese love to derive words from English and other languages, often abbreviating them. So terebijyon (television) becomes terebi, just like Brad Pitt becomes burapi.

There follows a quick guide to drawing the characters (a bit like Magic Pencil from Words and Pictures, but without the pencil)…

ヒ - hi (ビ - bi)

Start at the right end of the straight stick, drawing right to left. Then start at the top of the curve, doing it all in one stroke.

To form ビ - bi, put the ticks on after.

テ - te (デ - de)

Top line first, then the top bar of the T, then the line coming down. Note the slight curve to the left of the last line.

オ - o

Horizontal first, then the vertical. The vertical is drawn as a plain vertical line, but as you take your pen off the paper, just tick gently upwards and to the left. Then the diagonal, starting at the cross and curving just slightly.

レ - re

Drawn as one stroke, starting at the top, down to the bottom, then continue up and to the right. Note again the gentle curve of the last part.

Well done

Give yourself a pat on the back. Oh… and watch the Madonna video and look out for the sign… then you can tell your friends… “That says video! Hurrah!”.