Writing Systems
Yoko Sato and Chikako Cooke
There are four main types of writing systems Japanese people use in Japan.
1) Roomaji ( ローマ字）
2) Kanji (Chinese characters) （漢字）
3) Hiragana （ひらがな）
4) Katakana （カタカナ）
For instance, sound of “ka” can be written
1) ka (roomaji),
2) 加、火、化、下、家 etc. (kanji),
3) か(hiragana) or
4) カ(katakana) in Japanese writing system.
Regular Japanese Writing system is combination of Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Roomaji (Romanized character) is only used when regular Japanese writing system is not used or for people who cannot read or write Japanese since Roomaji system uses alphabets.
Japanese writing system usually uses a combination of Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana.
ex) 私は八時に喫茶店でコーヒーを飲みます。
Texts only with kana are usually for Children’s books.
This first chapter, we will focus on Hiragana and Katakana first.
Roomaji or Roman letters (alphabets)
ローマ字（じ）
Roomaji Roomaji or Roman letters (alphabets) are used to spell some words in Japan for their visual impact as well as to aid people who cannot read Hiragana, Katakana and/or Kanji.
Kanji 漢字（かんじ）
There are thousands of Kanji that came from China with the import of Buddhism. Most of them are ideographs, pictographs and phonetic-ideographic characters. Just like Chinese characters in China, each Kanji represents at least a meaning. However, unlike Chinese characters in Chinese language, most of Japanese Kanji has more than one way of reading.
Kanji words are used as nouns, adjective roots, adverb roots, and verb roots.
There are around 50,000 kanji characters in the dictionary; however, 2000 are used as daily life. Around 1000 kanji characters are introduced in the elementary school. In general, if you know these kanji characters in the elementary school, you will navigate life in Japan fine. Learning 1000 to 2000 characters sounds hard; however, there are only 214 radicals and 64 radicals are the most common usage.
Hiragana ひらがな
There are 46 letters that represent 46 sounds. Each letter is completely phonetic and represents just a sound. Each letter is developed from simplifying a whole Kanji (Chinese characters) .
Hiragana can be used as any nouns, as particles, and verb conjugational endings with combination of Kanji characters.
あいうえお Hiragana ひらがな table (JOSHU)
Katakana カタカナ
There are 46 letters that represent 46 sounds. Each letter is completely phonetic and represents just a sound. Each letter is developed from a part of Kanji. Each Katakana letter has a corresponding Hiragana letter.
1) Loan words (coffee, computer, wine etc.)
2) Place of foreign countries and names
(Texas, America, Johnson, Europe, Smith, Harry Potter)
3) Stylish; Fashionable rather than original Japanese words
4) Onomatopoeic words
5) Emphasizing
Typing Japanese Writing System
You need to learn BOTH how to write Japanese AND how to type in Japanese. You will learn how to write basic Japanese letters, Hiragana / Katakana (later Kanji), and how to type.
Please Japanize your computer first, then learn how to type in Japanese in JOSHU site.
This chapter is adapted from First Year Japanese I Textbook by Yoko Sato, Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
