In order to learn the Japanese language, you will need to understand the different writing systems and aspects of the language. Due to these factors, it can be difficult to determine how and where to begin learning a new language.

Hiragana should be mastered first before moving on to Katakana and finally Kanji. To read kanji, one must be able to read it in both hiragana and katakana (also known as kunyomi and onyomi respectively).

You have come to the right place if you’ve been looking for answers to these questions, since this article will shed more light on the order in which you should learn Japanese as well as why you should study it in that particular order. Let’s get started.

How many Japanese alphabets are there?

1. Hiragana

Japanese has its own written language based on this phonetic system. Each Japanese sound is represented by this phonetic system. Thus, theoretically, hiragana can be used for any form of writing. Since Japanese texts usually do not include spaces, hiragana is not used for everything. Therefore, a Japanese text must include both kanji and hiragana characters.

In total, there are 46 hiragana characters in hiragana. These characters have distinct sounds, but their meanings do not differ.

What are the main roles of hiragana?

Taking a look at hiragana in Japanese, we can see the most important functions they play.

• Hiragana is for creating grammatical structure

hiragana plays an important role in adding grammatical structure to any Japanese sentence. It can sometimes completely change the meaning of a word when it is added to it. It will be difficult to make sense of some words if you don’t have hiragana symbols.

• Hiragana is used for writing

Japanese words are commonly written in hiragana characters. As previously mentioned, many Japanese words are written entirely in hiragana. In case you aren’t sure which kanji character to use in a particular case, you can use a hiragana symbol instead.

• hiragana is utilized for showing pronunciation of a word

When a Japanese text includes kanji symbols that are unusual, it may be difficult to determine a word’s pronunciation. In addition, if the kanji symbol was accompanied by a hiragana character, it would be easier to understand. Yomigana and furigana are the names given to such hiragana symbols when used in this manner. Another use for hiragana is when no equivalent kanji exists for a given Japanese word.

2. Katakana

Besides hiragana, there is also katakana. Similarly to hiragana, each character corresponds to a specific syllable or sound.  As with hiragana, beginners should learn katakana as soon as they can in order to develop a good understanding of the Japanese language.

What are katakana symbols used for?

There are a variety of things that can be expressed using Katakana symbols. There are also many non-Japanese words that are significant. Katakana is often used to represent something borrowed or foreign. There are several words in Japanese borrowed from English and other languages. Katakana is used for such borrowed words. 

Over 80% of the time, Japanese katakana symbols represent foreign words.

Katakana makes it easier for English speakers to speak Japanese. Understanding katakana will make it easier for you to identify many words that have been borrowed from the English language.

Aside from foreign or borrowed words, you can also find katakana symbols 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.

Kanji

The third alphabet of the Japanese language is kanji. In general, kanji symbols are known as logograms i.e. pictures that are used 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.