So I’m a little lost on knowing when to use Hiragana, katakana and kanji. I found this article which helped explain it:
https://www.quora.com/When-do-you-know-to-use-Katakana-Hiragana-and-Kanji-when-writing-in-Japanese?top_ans=35888046
Does it basically just come down to memorizing which kanji is most common, and which words are not native to Japan? Is there an easy way to determine which words are loan words?
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Hmm, you linked a Quora thread that has all the answers to the question you just asked in multiple replies. Am I missing something? Looking for additional validation?
You use hiragana, katakana, or kanji depending on what the specific vocab needs you to use
Just copy the way Japanese people use it and you’ll be fine.
I think you may be confusing yourself before you’ve gotten started.
All I can say is beef up your vocabulary and everything else should fall into place if you use hiragana around it to link the components together.
On a side note, Japanese doesn’t have *alphabets.* Hiragana and Katakana are **syllabaries** meaning that the symbols represent syllables or morae. Kanji are logographic characters.
This video describes the main uses of the three scripts – [https://youtu.be/r7a8OjvViwE](https://youtu.be/r7a8OjvViwE)