![]() There are 46 characters, with 5 vowels and 41 consonants. While the Kanji script is responsible for the main parts of speech, the Hiragana script covers everything from suffixes to function words and particles. Unlike Kanji, the characters used in the Hiragana system of writing each correspond to a single sound or syllable, rather than an entire word or complete meaning. Hiragana is one of two syllabary scripts in Japanese, which together with katakana is grouped under the kana category of writing. Japanese Hiragana Hiragana is learnt from a young age, and it’s an important writing system in Japanese. This means you’ll need to learn the two scripts together to give yourself a real chance of solid Japanese reading comprehension and writing skills. In many instances, the Kanji acts as the stem of the word, and the Hiragana acts as the ending. However, unlike in English, the Kanji often require assistance to form the words. Kanji are largely used to form the main parts of speech, which includes everything from nouns and verbs to adjectives and adverbs. This of course assumes that you are learning the most commonly used Kanji. You can get by with just a couple hundred in the beginning, and this will serve you very well. This is great to know, since it makes the daunting task of learning all the Kanji seem less intimidating. Better still, if you just learn 100 or 200, you will be able to recognise about half of what you see in most newspapers and other everyday texts. It’s thought that if you know 3000 of the 45,000 or so Kanji, then you can understand the vast majority of common texts. This means that they will take more time to master than the kana, at least as far as memorising and writing them out goes. To mirror the fact that Kanji can have a complex meaning attached to them, each ideogram can be made up of anywhere from 2-20 strokes of the pen. ![]() Ideograms are characters which each have their own meaning, and can stand alone to represent an object, action, or concept.Īs a result, if you were to only learn the Kanji in Japanese, you would still be able to understand and communicate effectively. ![]() The Kanji writing system in Japanese consists of characters which are borrowed from the Chinese language. Japanese Kanji Kanji is the most common writing system in Japanese, which was borrowed from the Chinese language. However, what we do know is that the Kanji system was borrowed from Chinese, and the two kana systems were developed to fill in the gaps and capture the nuance of the Japanese language. So to summarise, how exactly the Japanese writing systems came to be is still somewhat shrouded in mystery. Curiously, while Hiragana works closely with the Kanji to form many parts of speech, Katakana is largely used for foreign borrowed words, onomatopoeia, and slang. The Hiragana writing system and the Katakana writing system fall under the label of ‘kana’, which means that they are both syllabic scripts. ![]() Interestingly, Katakana was thought to have come about as a result of priests who would read Chinese texts, translate them into Japanese, and would need something to help them remember more readily. Kanji can convey a lot of meaning, but the development of two other writing systems was necessary to express nuance in Japanese writing. Over time, words were used to capture the nuance of the Japanese spoken word, and so the Chinese text evolved into a new one fit for the Japanese language. That is to say, Chinese was written in Japan before a writing system was developed for the Japanese language. In fact, the first recorded examples of Japanese writing which date way back to the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. This overlap is clearly recognisable to speakers of both Chinese and Japanese, but the origins of the other writing systems are less clear. This is because the Kanji script uses many ideographs or characters that are common in Chinese. Many consider the modern form of Japanese writing as an adaptation from Chinese. ![]() There are many different theories and debates surrounding the history of the Japanese language, and these are divided up into the spoken and the written elements. It’s one of the only languages of a major nation which has its roots shrouded in mystery, meaning there isn’t too much information about how it originally came to be. With a written form that is so complex, it has proven difficult for linguists to pin down exactly how each script came about. The history of the Japanese language and its writing systems is a bit of an enigma. The history behind the Japanese writing systems is long and complex. Let's go Origins of Japanese Writing Systemsīefore take a look at the different types of Japanese writing, or scripts as they’re commonly known, we’re going to explore the origins of this peculiar writing tradition. ![]()
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