Japanese Alphabet: The 3 Writing Systems Explained - Busuu (2024)

FAQs

What are the 3 Japanese writing systems? ›

These three systems are called hiragana, katakana and kanji. If that sounds overwhelming, don't worry! Hiragana and katakana are easy enough to learn – and will be a big help if you're thinking about travelling to Japan, or learning basic Japanese. Learning kanji is a little trickier, but we'll come to that later.

And, even more frustratingly for learners, these alphabets are used together. As such, you can't just learn one alphabet and hope to make do. If you want to really hone your Japanese skills, you'll need to learn all three.

Use flashcards. Making them gives you an opportunity to practice writing, and using them helps you memorize the alphabet. Pay attention to stroke order: In Japanese, the order in which you write characters makes a big difference. Use a guide or workbook to make sure you get the order right.

Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use.

Like hiragana, Japan's third writing system, katakana, is a native alphabet based on sounds. But why did Japan have need for yet another writing system? The reason goes back, again, to the fact that reading kanji is difficult – and not just for non-Japanese people and women.

Q. Why does the Japanese language have to use three different types of script; Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana? A. This is because each of the three types of script, Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, has its own specific role.

In short, you're going to need all of them! Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji work together to form a complete sentence. However, Hiragana and Katakana are usually the starting point, as they are the phonetic base of the language and have a finite number of characters.

Hiragana. Hiragana is the most basic writing system in the Japanese language because of its foundation. It is the prior learned system by new language learners and children and also is easy compared to Katakana and Kanji. Hiragana has a set of 46 characters.

Because Hiragana describes only one syllable for one letter in a square space, it takes too much space to write, and also because we have too many hom*onyms, we “replace” words in Kanji, to make the sentence shorter and more understandable.

The three writing systems of Japanese are Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. You should learn hiragana first, followed by katakana and kanji. Hiragana looks more cursive than katakana or kanji.

Is there a trick to learning hiragana? ›

Use Hiragana mnemonics — pictures to match the sound and characters to help the brain memorise. The brain has something called schemas that help you link prior knowledge to new knowledge. Therefore, the brain will have an easier time remembering if it can match the character to a familiar picture/drawing/image.

Start with the vocabulary and grammar. Learn basic vocabulary and grammar of the Japanese language and set a schedule for you to achieve your target. Learn pronunciations of the words. Once you get a hold of the basic Japanese sound it will be easy for you to learn the pronunciation of the Japanese words.

Korean grammar is more difficult than Japanese, but there is a set number of patterns on how verbs are conjugated, so once you reach intermediate level, learning conjugation rules should be much easier.

There are distinctive disparities between the two language structures. Japanese grammar generally follows SOV (subject, object, verb) language. In contrast, Chinese grammar follows SVO, similar to English, making learning and speaking Chinese easier than Japanese.

Chinese and Japanese are two of the most popular languages to learn, Japanese is generally seen as being harder than Chinese due to its writing system and complex grammar structures.

Several approaches have been taken to classify writing systems, the most common and basic one being a broad division into three categories: logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic (or segmental). Logographies use characters that represent semantic units, such as words or morphemes.

Although Hiragana and Katakana are used for the same sounds, they have very different roles in a sentence. Katakana is used almost exclusively for nouns and adjectives, whereas Hiragana has many more uses and is much more common in written sentences. But you still need to know both if you want to get around in Japan!

While Hiragana and Katakana are used to represent Japanese words, kanji is used to represent both Japanese words and borrowed words from different languages.