Alphabet's?
That's right! The Japanese uses more than one alphabet.. they actually use whole three alphabets!
Hiragana
Katakana
and
Kanji
Hiragana
Katakana
and
Kanji
Kana
Hiragana and Katakana also goes under one name: Kana.
These are the most "Easy" ones, each of these two alphabets contains 46 letters. And some of them have variants and combines which then adds up to 46 more sounds. And if that wasn't enough... The Katakana can be combined in more ways adding 19 sounds.
Which means we end up with 111 sounds... wait aren't there missing 46? Nope. Because Hiragana and Katakana have the same sounds! :D
For example:
はじめまして - Hiragana
ハジ乄マシテ - Katakana
They both mean the exact same thing: "ha ji me ma shi te".
Hajimemashite = Nice to meet you.
Hiragana is used most and is easiest to learn, since it is easier to differentiate between the letters.
Katakana is used mostly for foreign words, but is harder because the letters tend to look a lot alike.
Romaji is the way to write japanese with roman letters, but it is almost never used by the japanese people. But is a way to learn how to pronounce and read japanese for foreign beginners.
So "Hajimemashite" is Romaji.
These are the most "Easy" ones, each of these two alphabets contains 46 letters. And some of them have variants and combines which then adds up to 46 more sounds. And if that wasn't enough... The Katakana can be combined in more ways adding 19 sounds.
Which means we end up with 111 sounds... wait aren't there missing 46? Nope. Because Hiragana and Katakana have the same sounds! :D
For example:
はじめまして - Hiragana
ハジ乄マシテ - Katakana
They both mean the exact same thing: "ha ji me ma shi te".
Hajimemashite = Nice to meet you.
Hiragana is used most and is easiest to learn, since it is easier to differentiate between the letters.
Katakana is used mostly for foreign words, but is harder because the letters tend to look a lot alike.
Romaji is the way to write japanese with roman letters, but it is almost never used by the japanese people. But is a way to learn how to pronounce and read japanese for foreign beginners.
So "Hajimemashite" is Romaji.
Kanji
Now for the fun part. ;P
Remember how I said Kana was the easy part? Here comes the HARD part. ;)
Kanji means literally "Chinese Character". The Japanese adopted the Chinese Characters long ago. and as you would expect, the evolution of each country has made some of their characters different from one another. So Kanji is the 'Japanese Chinese Alphabet'.
Confused yet?
How many Characters are there in Kanji then...
Well... when leaving school, a young Japanese person knows about 2000 Kanji.
A grown up knows about 3000 to 4000. A "japanese literature teacher" can know as many as 7000 Kanji! For each kanji you must learn:
・ The Stroke Order
・ It's Pronunciation
・ It's Meaning
The stroke order is very important! It can be the only way to recognize a handwritten Kanji. And in a dictionary you also use the stroke order and count(count of strokes in a Kanji).
A Kanji can have multiple pronunciations and meanings, as to how and where it is used.
Now.. that was writing Japanese... or the explanation of what and how much to learn... next is learning the language. :P
While learning this I will follow up here:
Kana
Kanji
Remember how I said Kana was the easy part? Here comes the HARD part. ;)
Kanji means literally "Chinese Character". The Japanese adopted the Chinese Characters long ago. and as you would expect, the evolution of each country has made some of their characters different from one another. So Kanji is the 'Japanese Chinese Alphabet'.
Confused yet?
How many Characters are there in Kanji then...
Well... when leaving school, a young Japanese person knows about 2000 Kanji.
A grown up knows about 3000 to 4000. A "japanese literature teacher" can know as many as 7000 Kanji! For each kanji you must learn:
・ The Stroke Order
・ It's Pronunciation
・ It's Meaning
The stroke order is very important! It can be the only way to recognize a handwritten Kanji. And in a dictionary you also use the stroke order and count(count of strokes in a Kanji).
A Kanji can have multiple pronunciations and meanings, as to how and where it is used.
Now.. that was writing Japanese... or the explanation of what and how much to learn... next is learning the language. :P
While learning this I will follow up here:
Kana
Kanji
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