The Japanese writing system is a bit complicated for forigners in general. It consists of three different sets of script, that are kanji, hiragana, and katakana.
If you live in Japan, you may have faced difficulties because of the Japanese language. Even if you don’t understand everything about Japanese writing system, understanding few basic concepts of Japanese writing system may help you significantly.
Only thing you need to keep in your mind is just following 3 things:-
- Hiragana(ひらがな) – Simple
- Katakana(カタカナ) – Foreign word
- Kanji(漢字) – Deep & profound
Hiragana (ひらがな)
The word hiragana literally means “ordinary” or “simple”. Japanese children start learning Japanese writing from hiragana. It is the most basic and simple script out of the 3 Japanese scripts.
If you look at the shape of hiragana, it is more cursive than others, and hiragana is felt to have a feminine and soft quality.
We can see many hiragana in our daily life. For example, if you go to a supermarket in Japan, you may able to see りんご(ringo/apple), みかん(mikan/orange), かぼちゃ(kabocha/pumpkin), or とうふ(tofu).
Hiragana is the basic of Japanese writing, and the information available in hiragana is relatively easy to understand for everyone in Japan.
Katakana (カタカナ)
The word katakana literally means “partial” or “fragmented”. Katakana was developed by taking parts of Chinese characters as a form of shorthand. Compared to hiragana, the shape of katakana is more angular.
In modern Japanese, katakana is often used for transcription of words from foreign languages or loanwords (other than words historically imported from Chinese) that can’t be written in kanji, such as コーヒー(coffee) or カメラ(camera). Similarly, katakana is used for country names, foreign places, and foreign personal names such as アメリカ(America), ロンドン(London), スミスさん(Mr./Ms. Smith), メアリー(Mary) etc.
If non Japanese people write their name in Japanese, it is in katakana by default.
Kanji (漢字)
Kanji is adopted Chinese characters which were first introduced to Japan in the 5th century. Just as necessary for functional literacy in current Japanese language, there are 2,136 characters are regarded as regular-use kanji.
The most unique thing of kanji is that each character has its own meaning and corresponds to a word. It’s completely different from alphabet. Alphabet are symbols that represent sound, but kanji are the symbol representing a meaning instead of sound alone.
One more unique aspect about kanji is that there are several ways of reading a kanji character. For example, 山 (mountain) can be read “san”, “zan”, “sen”, “zen” as well as “yama”.
You may feel that kanji is difficult to understand. However, on the contrally, there is a huge potential for the conbinations of the thousands of kanji if you consider with its variety of meanings and sound.
3 scripts of Japanese writing-Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji
Cursive script of hiragana is simple and relatively easy words, angular script of katakana is for foreign words, and Chinese character kanji has its own meaning and several reading ways.
We hope that above mentioned features of each Japanese scripts and basic concept of Japanese writing system may help your life in Japan a bit easier and fun.
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