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All About Japanese Characters

The Japanese writing system consists of hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters. Hiragana is used for native Japanese words and grammar, katakana is used for foreign words and names, and kanji are complex characters adopted from Chinese. Mastering hiragana and katakana is important before studying kanji. There are also romanization systems to represent the Japanese sounds in the Latin alphabet.

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180 views5 pages

All About Japanese Characters

The Japanese writing system consists of hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters. Hiragana is used for native Japanese words and grammar, katakana is used for foreign words and names, and kanji are complex characters adopted from Chinese. Mastering hiragana and katakana is important before studying kanji. There are also romanization systems to represent the Japanese sounds in the Latin alphabet.

Uploaded by

Hola Chingu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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All about Japanese characters: hiragana, katakana

and kanji

The Japanese writing system consists of two types of characters: the syllabic kana
– hiragana (平仮名) and katakana (片仮名) – and kanji (漢字), the adopted Chinese characters.
Each have different usages, purposes and characteristics and all are necessary in Japanese
writing.

Most Japanese sentences will have combinations of hiragana and kanji and occasionally,
katakana. Hiragana and katakana are unique to the Japanese language and we highly
recommend students master these two systems first before beginning their Japanese
language studies in Japan.

Because of the three distinct characters and the varying usage, the Japanese written language
is described as one of the most difficult languages to master. Read on to find out all about
Japanese characters: hiragana, katakana and kanji.

You can write Japanese characters in two ways. Firstly, they can be in columns going from top
to bottom, right to left (like in Chinese). Or horizontally from left to right, top to bottom (like in
English).  That’s why you’ll find some books open with the spine of the book to the right, while
some open to the left.
Hiragana

Hiragana, which literally means “ordinary” or “simple” kana, is used primarily for native
Japanese words and grammatical elements. There are 46 basic characters which all symbolise
syllabaries, or 71 including diacritics. Each sound in the Japanese language corresponds to one
character in the syllabary. Students will typically learn hiragana first, before learning katakana
and kanji.

Hiragana is also used for furigana (ふりがな) or yomigana (読み仮名), a reading aid for kanji you
will find either next to or above the kanji. It will help you read kanji you may not know yet, which
is another reason why it’s important for students to master hiragana first. Children’s books
targeted at young children are often written in hiragana.

On a more technical note, hiragana is used to write:

 Okurigana (送り仮名), or suffixes following kanji roots, which may inflect verbs and
adjectives
 Grammatical and function words such as particles
 Japanese native words without kanji or with extremely formal or complicated kanji
forms.
These basic Japanese characters can also be modified by adding a dakuten (濁点) marker — ( ゙
)
or a handakuten (半濁点) marker ( ゚).

If all of this is confusing, don’t worry – you will come to understand how hiragana is used the
more you study Japanese. To start off with though, it might be helpful to use an app like our
very own Hiragana Quest app. It teaches with mnemonics, which make it easier and more fun to

memorise each character. Learn more! 

Katakana
Katakana, meaning “fragmentary kana,” are used primarily for foreign words and names,
loanwords and onomatopoeia. Some of the most useful Japanese words are untranslatable
onomatopoeia, such as ギリギリ (girigiri). This means “to be at the limit”, such as just passing,
just making it on the train before the doors close, or being just in time for an appointment.
Like hiragana, there are 5 singular vowels, 40 consonant-vowels and 1 singular consonant in
katakana. Often you will see both hiragana and katakana in a 5×10 grid, called gojyuon ( 五十
音), or “fifty sounds.”

Gairaigo (外来語), or loan words, are all written in katakana, such as バナナ, or banana. Foreign
names are similarly also written in katakana. If you have a non-Japanese name, you will
probably learn how to write your name in katakana first.

Kanji
There are several thousand kanji characters in regular use. All have different meanings and
most have more than one pronunciation, depending on context. For example, 今日 could be read
kyō , meaning “today,” or it could also be read konnichi, meaning “recent days.”

The different readings are categorised as either:


 Onyomi (音読み), which is “sound reading,” derived from Chinese, or
 Kunyomi (訓読み), which is “meaning reading,” and are native Japanese readings .
Most characters have at least one of each, but some have more and some only have one.

In Japanese elementary, middle and high schools, students learn more than 2,000  jyoyo
kanji (常用漢字), or regularly-used kanji. Fun fact: that’s also the number of kanji required to
pass the highest level of the JLPT. Although there are more than 50,000 kanji, most native
Japanese don’t know nearly as many.

There isn’t really any trick or shortcut to learning kanji. You must learn and memorise each
character along with its readings. But what does make it easier is living and studying in Japan,
where you are exposed to Japanese every day. You will get accustomed to how words are read
and used faster than you would learning Japanese in your home country.

Rōmaji
In Japan you will also see the Roman alphabet used to spell out sounds. Rōmaji (ローマ字), or
the romanised letters, may be used where Japanese text is targeted at non-Japanese speakers,
such as on street signs, dictionaries, textbooks and passports.

Rō maji is also used when typing on the computer. Although Japanese keyboards have the
capacity to type with kana, many people use the latin script to type out the sounds and
characters in rō maji.

When you’re first learning the characters, rō maji will help you read the Japanese words.

Another great way to master the basics is to watch our uploaded videos on Youtube.

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