Lesson 10 of 12
Kana Sprint 10 — reading Komorebi
about 6 minutes
After this lesson you can
- Read every sign and name in the Komorebi story without support.
- Read a line that mixes hiragana and katakana without losing track of which script is which.
Words this lesson teaches
- こもれびハウス
- Komorebi House, the building the whole story happens in
- きっさてん
- coffee shop
- スタッフ
- staff
- むぎ
- Mugi, the cat
- ケーキ
- cake
- やすみ
- a day off
What it explains
Which script a word is in tells you something
Seeing katakana is information before you have read it: the word is probably borrowed, or a product, or being emphasised. こもれびハウス splits down the middle for exactly that reason — komorebi is Japanese and house is not. When you meet an unfamiliar katakana word, sounding it out and listening for an English word underneath works often enough to be worth trying first.
What is left, and what is not needed
You can now read both kana sets, the voiced marks, the small characters and both ways of writing a long vowel. What remains is kanji, which arrives gradually and with furigana based on what you already know — the reader supplies the reading per character, so there is no chart to finish and no gate to pass. Sprint 1 said you would not have to finish the kana before reading real Japanese, and Foundations has been proving it for nine lessons.