How do I know when to switch between hiragana and katakana?

15 comments

1. Hiragana is used for stuff like particles/grammar/pronunciation while katakana is used for borrowed words, onomatopoeia etc. Most stuff is Kanji. Combined characters are like characters ending in ‘i’ and や、よ、ゆ added to them, turned smaller

2. Katakana is used for borrowed words and names. (e.g. **アメリカ** –> America)

   Hiragana is mostly used for grammatical reasons. (e.g 私**は**アメリカ人**です。**–> I **am** American)

   Kanji is used for nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. (e.g お**元気**ですか。–> How are you? )

3. Everyone else already have you good answers. I’m just popped out to say that eventually we’ll get the hang of it! Sometimes I can read entire phrases now. It’s really moticating.

4. Katakana is used for words that are “borrowed” from other languages (English, in most cases). You must have noticed that words written in Katakana are often pronounced almost like their English equivalent. For example, “door” and ドア (DOA) or “table” and テーブル (TĒBURU), or even “pen” and ペン (PEN).

   Some katakana words are official Japanese words, like ペン (pen), but some are literally borrowed, like when you want to say “dragon” but don’t know how to say it in Japanese, you can borrow the word “dragon” from English and put it in Katakana. Then, “dragon” becomes ドラゴン (DORAGON). Or when you want to say “ball” and it would be easier to say ボール (BŌRU), when the correct equivalent to “ball” in Japanese is actually たま (TAMA).

   In no way my examples were influenced by some tv show’s name •_•

5. There are many exceptions, but the basic rule of thumb is that Japanese and Chinese origin words are written in hiragana, while other foreign words (and most of these are from English) are written in katakana.

6. What are you using to study? If you’ve been at it a few months this should have been presented already.

7. Read and write what you see. It’s as simple as that. Any rule people give you here will have exceptions.

8. I recommend you watching this video, it’s 10 minutes long and when i was a complete beginner it helped understand really well how the writing system works

   https://youtu.be/r7a8OjvViwE

9. I think the best way to understand katakana is to think of it like italics in English. It is used for foreign borrowed words, onomatopoeia, emphasis, or otherwise unnatural-sounding speech (for example, a robot).

   Hiragana may be used for everything else, though a learned Japanese person will mainly only use it for grammatical elements, and words whose kanji is uncommon or difficult to read.

10. Switching between hiragana and katakana is less about when and more about what words you’re trying to say. As you’re learning new vocabulary, those words will either be in katakana or hiragana/ kanji and you’ll just keep them that way. Try not to think too hard about when! がんばって👍

11. 試験 and テスト

    教室 and クラス

    きっさてん and カフェ

    These are quite confusing

12. All of the answers above are good for general uses. In practice, they are mostly interchangeable. I’ve seen manga and books switch things from kanji or hiragana to katakana for emphasis or even if the character is talking weird. Likewise I’ve seen things usually katakana in hiragana on rare occasion

13. Dont think of it as “switching” between them, some words are written in kanji, some in hiragana and some in katakana cause thats how theyre supposed to be written.

    – Katakana is for loanwords, theyre borrowed from english, spanish, french, portuguese, etc.

    – Hiragana is for all sorts of words really, including conjugations. Hence why theyre often matched with kanji.

    – Kanji, they express concepts and need hiragana to be conjugated.

    There is no specific logic behind the “switching”. People are just writting stuff how theyre supposed to be written, thats all. As an example:

    – Water – 水 (written in kanji, period)

    – Table – テーブル (written in katakana, period)

    – Pretty – きれい(な) – (can be written in kanji, but it’s more commonly written in hiragana… so at least for now, hiragana it is, period).

    You might be wondering, if water is “mizu”, cant i just write みず? No, cause thats how kids just learning to write hiragana would write it. Adults write it in kanji 水 and thats how itll be written everywhere so thats how you need to learn it. Same with literally every other word. Hope it makes sense!

14. Hiragana is for words domestic to Japan (which is around 70-90% of what you’ll be using of the two), while katakana is for foreign words, onomatopoeia, or sometimes just for emphasis.

    This is an anecdote but might come up if you play games in Japanese so I’ll say it anyways. Sometimes games developed in Japan, with the setting clearly in Japan, will inexplicably have names that are Japanese and of Japanese NPCs in Katakana, like most of the major named NPCs in Pokemon. ナツメ/Natsume/Sabrina, for example. Consider that an exception to the rule.

15. Also, typically names of animals and trees, plants are in Katakana (although writing them in hiragana may not be “wrong” and you can often find people write then in hiragana)
    Example: クマ、カブトムシ、タンポポ、アマ etc