Questions about わ & は and reading Japanese.

Frankie3

I just completed the Essential Japanese course. I had a few questions.

First, when reading Japanese is there any clear way to tell if the はis pronounced Ha or Wa? Right now I just sound out the word and that leads me to the correct sound.

The second question is when reading Japanese, what are some tips? Since there are no spaces, it is hard for me to read it right away, with out going slow and sounding everything out.

Thanks for any help!

Sakura

Congratulations on completing Essential Japanese!

The character は is read wa when it is used as a particle. For example, the は in わたしはがくせいです Watashi wa gakusee desu is read wa.

Basically, that is the only case where the character は is read wa.

However, as you know, the character は in everyday greeting phrases such as こんにちは and こんばんは is also read wa. This is because, historically, the は in these greeting phrases originated as the particle は wa. So they are the special cases.

It is true that reading Japanese is hard because there are no spaces between words. This is especially true when you don't read kanji yet. In fact, it is hard even for native Japanese speakers to read Japanese sentences written all in hiragana and katakana because it is not easy to recognize word boundaries. The truth is, kanji makes word boundaries easier to determine. Thus, as you learn more kanji characters, you'll be able to read Japanese faster.

So it is only natural that you read slowly right now. However, as you start memorizing common Japanese words and phrases, your reading speed will increase, because you'll start seeing familiar words and phrases as chunks.

There is no need to particularly practice reading fast at this point. Just keep working on learning new words and phrases!

AriTheOtaku

If I may make an observation, I think that the answer provided doesn't completely explain the question asked - What I mean by that is looking at the "ha"/"wa" Romanisation of the character in question. I've been having the same feeling myself, and it's honestly a bit confusing (since each kana usually has only one sound), so if I may re-phrase the question (and hopefully get a better understanding), how can you tell if the character is read "ha" or "wa"?

[Note: If I mis-read or mis-understood anything and have ended up rattling nonsense, please correct me - Any response will be greatly appreciated!]

Frankie3

The answer was saying that greetings are a special case in the Japanese language. That はHa originally was わWa in these phrases. 

はHa is also pronounced わ Wa when it is used as a particle. わ Wa marks the topic of the sentence, as in  わたしは Frankie です。Watashi wa Frankie desu. わ Wa marks the topic of the sentence which is わたし Watashi.