Japanese Writing Systems – Kanji, Katakana And Hiragana
There are three writing systems in the Japanese language They are the Chinese characters called Kanji and Hiragana and Katakana.Hiragana and Katakana are both writing systems called kana.Some people refer to Hiragana and Katakana as alphabets, but they not really alphabets, they are more a way of writing pronunciation.They are actually symbols to represent the phonetics and syllables of the language. The characters are made of a consonant and a vowel paired together, with the exception of only one character, ‘n’.
The kana, hiragana and katakana are similar in a number of ways. The first way they are similar is that they both have forty six characters. Also, they have a pronunciation that doesn’t change – this is different to the Chinese characters called kanji, where one character can have a number of ways of reading and pronouncing.Thankfully, they are both easy to learn, read and write. As they represent all sounds in the Japanese language, either can be used to write anything without a lot of effort.
The history of the characters goes back to the eighth century. Katakana is easily recognizable, as the characters have sharp, straight lines and angular corners. Hiragana on the other hand has softer curves and many people believe the characters are artistic and almost beautiful. They both have very different uses, Katakana is used for words that have been imported from other languages into Japanese. Hiragana however are adaptations originally from Chinese characters and are used everywhere Chinese characters and katakana is not – sentence particles and word ending.
After you have mastered Hiragana and Katakana, you will turn to Kanji. It should be left to last though as it is the most difficult and will take the most time to learn. Learning Kanji is essential if you want to read and write the language. Before thinking about Kanji though, your first task is to learn Hiragana. A great way to study Hiragana is to get yourself a Hiragana Chart
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Tags: Hiragana, hiragana chart, japanese, learn Japanese