Writing Japanese Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana
Since Japanese animation and movies have become so popular, it seems like the Japanese language has been one of the most popular languages to learn in other countries in recent years. In Japanese, we have three different kinds of alphabets. They are called kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Even though this may sound complicated, it is actually very simple and once you’ve learned it, it’s not hard at all.
Kanji are characters borrowed from China a long time ago. Each of them has its own meaning and many of them are based on the shapes of the meanings. Also, they are read in two ways: on-yomi and kun-yomi. On-yomi is based on how they were pronounced in Chinese and kun-yomi is based on the meanings of the Japanese language. We start practicing how to write the basic kanji at elementary school when we are about 7 years old. It’s been said that we have about 50,000 kanji but we only use 1,945 of them in our daily lives which we learn by the time we graduate from junior high. (No one actually cares…)
So, could we write everything in kanji?? If so, it takes a lot of time, doesn’t it? Good question! The answer is “No.” That’s why we have hiragana and katakana also. (Personally, I have no idea how Chinese language works by writting everything in kanji.)
Both hiragana and katakana were originally created in Japan after kanji were brought to Japan from China. Hiragana are formed by simplifying the shapes of kanji and katakana are formed from one part of a kanji. Now, let me explain how they are used:
- Any essential parts in the sentences such as nouns, verbs, adjective, adverb etc
- Japanese names
- Ancillary words (particles, auxiliary verbs, prefixes, suffixes etc.)
- Endings of verbs and adjectives (that we call "okurigana")
- Japanese words that have no kanji and whose kanji are hard to write/read
- Japanese words that the readers are unlikely to know them
- Foreign words and names (mostly)
- Echo-words
- Imitative words
- Commonly used animals, plants and objects
Since they are all used in different ways, they can be used in one sentence. Interesting, huh? You may still think kanji is hard to write, but they are simple and actually easy to memorize. Here are some examples:
The formation of kanji:
The kanji is formed by combining two or three simple kanji:
Amazing, aren’t they? This shows how ancient people had a lot of imagination to create a langauge as beautiful and interesting as the Japanese language.