The first thing that i learned during my courses is that Japanese, unlike English, does not have one single way of writing words and sentences, but four: Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Romaji. Unlike English were you use individual letters to form words, Japanese use a combination of vowels and syllables to create them. I'll give a quick rundown of each individual type of writing:
- Hiragana is a series of 46 symbols that depict the 5 vowels used in Japanese( A, I, U, E, O), and the 41 syllables( KA, KI, KU, KE, KO for example) that are used in conjunction with the vowels to form words. Hiragana is the first thing that needs to be learned in order to study Japanese.
- Katakana is like Hiragana, a series of symbols that depict the same 5 vowels and 41 syllables used in Hiragana to form words, but with a major difference. whilst on one hand symbols in hiragana are used to write words which are of Japanese origin( for example the word ''riori,'' constructed from 2 syllables and 1 vowel RI-O-RI, which means "cooked food"), symbols in katakana are used when writing words of foreign origin(for example the word "basu", constructed from 2 syllabels BA-SU, which means "bus" and is of English origin), or when emphasising certain words.
- Kanji are basically the symbols everyone thinks of when they picture Japanese writing. Each kanji has a particular meaning when written on its own, but they can be combined in pairs of 2 or more to form different words( for example if you combine the kanji "HI" which literally means light, with the kanji "TSUKI" which means moon, you get the word "AKARUI" which means light). there are currently over 100.000 kanji in the japanasese language, of which only around 3000 are used in everyday life. In my 3 years of university studies I will learn roughly 1000 of them.
- Romaji is basically Japanese text in Latin writing. it is used to ease the process of learning Japanese to foreigners, or on various multinational signs in japan. It is the style of writing I used in the previous examples, and the same style I will use until people master writing in hiragana and katakana.
It should be noted that Japanese write in a combination of kanji, hiragana, and katakana. while it is possible to write entirely in hiragana and katakana, people in Japan rarely do so. Whilst I learned to write in hiragana and katakana in about a month of courses, learning kanji is a process that never stops. In my following posts I will teach you hiragana and katakana, and will eventually move on to kanji and forming sentences.
