You will be introduced to different Japanese writing systems at the beginning of the process of learning Japanese, primarily hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Several students may be tempted to concentrate on one or two of the writing systems while neglecting the others due to the difficulty of learning them. In this case, you would be wise to learn only hiragana without learning katakana, kanji, or another writing system.
There is no need to study kanji or katakana if you only want to learn hiragana. The problem with this is that you will be restricted in what you are able to read or write in Japanese. It will be impossible to read anything but children’s books if you only know hiragana. You need to learn hiragana if you want to read newspapers, food menus, train station posts, road signs, and other essential everyday items.
However, you shouldn’t forget that katakana and kanji are equally important for learning Japanese. If you do this, you will have a good understanding of the Japanese language that will help you communicate effectively.
Japanese Alphabets: The Three Scripts
1. Hiragana
This writing system is known as the fundamental phonetic alphabet of the Japanese language. It is used for the representation of each sound in Japanese. Therefore, it can be theoretically assumed that every form of writing can be done in hiragana. Practically, Japanese people don’t write everything in hiragana because Japanese texts don’t usually have spaces. Hence, kanji must come alongside hiragana characters for people to understand a Japanese text.
Overall, there are 46 basic hiragana characters. Each of these characters has a specific sound, but the meanings are not independent.
What are the main roles of hiragana?
Now, let’s take a look at the most important roles that hiragana play in the Japanese language.
- Hiragana is for creating grammatical structure
The most prominent role of hiragana is for adding grammatical structure to any Japanese sentence. Sometimes, when it is added to a word, it will alter its meaning completely. Therefore, if you don’t have hiragana symbols in some words, it will be difficult to make any sense out of them.
- Hiragana is used for writing
Generally, hiragana characters are utilized for writing different Japanese words. As suggested earlier, various Japanese words can be written entirely hiragana. Even if you don’t remember the right kanji characters to use in a particular instance, you can substitute it with a hiragana symbol.
- hiragana is utilized for showing pronunciation of a word
If there is an unusual kanji symbol in a Japanese text, it may be difficult to determine the pronunciation of such a word. However, if a hiragana character is added to the kanji symbol, it will be easier for you to know the right pronunciation. When used in this manner, such a hiragana symbol will be called yomigana or furigana. In some other situations, hiragana can be used to write some Japanese words that don’t have any kanji equivalent.
2. Katakana
The second Japanese alphabet is katakana. It is similar to hiragana because it is a phonetic system with every character having a specific syllable or sound. Like hiragana, a beginner must learn katakana as soon as possible to ensure that they can have a good grasp of the Japanese language.
What are katakana symbols used for?
Katakana symbols are usually utilized for an array of things. But the most common and significant ones are non-Japanese words. In other words, katakana characters are often used for representing borrowed or foreign. You should note that several Japanese words are borrowed from English and a few other languages. So, such borrowed words will be written with katakana. In fact, over 80% of the time that katakana symbols are used in Japanese, they represent foreign words.
For English speakers, katakana makes it easy for you to speak Japanese. This is because when you understand the characters of katakana, it will be easier for you to identify various words that are borrowed from the English language.
Apart from foreign or borrowed words, it is also possible to find katakana symbols that are used for:
- Names of some animals
- Scientific words that don’t have any specific Japanese equivalent
- Company names – the companies can be either foreign or local ones
- Robot-speech – this refers to when Japanese texts are written as if robots are talking
- Names of foods – this is particularly true for plant and animal foods as well as foreign foods
- Onomatopoeia – these are words that are written in the same way as what they represent
- Adding stylistic purposes to texts
- Putting emphasis on some texts
Katakana characters are also useful in several other cases, but they are not as significant as the ones described above.
The third alphabet of the Japanese language is kanji. In general, kanji symbols are known as logograms i.e. pictures that are using for ideas, concepts, or words. Kanji is a writing script adopted from the Chinese language and used for giving more clarity and meaning to Japanese.
Overall, there are more than 50,000 kanji symbols in Japanese. But you don’t have to worry about these characters as an average native Japanese speaker doesn’t even know more than 10 percent of these characters. As a learner, your focus should be on the first 2,000 kanji characters. From there, you can start learning more kanji symbols.
What are kanji characters used for?
Typically, kanji symbols are important when you want to describe certain content-heavy words. These words may include verbs, adverbs, nouns, as well as adjectives. As a result of this, you don’t need kanji if you only want to learn how to speak and listen to the Japanese language.
However, when it comes to writing and reading, you cannot do without knowing some important kanji characters. Kanji will probably account for over 40% of the printable symbols in an average Japanese newspaper. Therefore, if you want to read newspapers, books, food menus, and other things correctly, you need to familiarize yourself with kanji characters.
It is noteworthy that some people consider Japanese to have a fourth writing system which is called romaji. However, you should understand that romaji is not a real writing script on its own, but it is just a way of Romanizing Japanese. Romaji is only used for making it easy for foreigners to have a quick understanding of the Japanese language.