Asking about alphabets

3 comments

1. There are many good guides on learning Japanese and I would encourage you to look around yourself a little bit until you find one you like. There are after all many ways to learn a language and much of it comes down to personal preference.

   For instance there is this one: [https://morg.systems/Japanese-Primer](https://morg.systems/Japanese-Primer)

   Or this one: [https://animecards.site/learningjapanese/](https://animecards.site/learningjapanese/)

   Or this one: [https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/](https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/)

   And here is an example of how the different writing systems are used in practice: [https://learnjapanese.moe/img/highlighted_manga.png](https://learnjapanese.moe/img/highlighted_manga.png)

2. i am most definitely not as knowledgeable as many people here when it comes to the language. i am still a beginner and have been learning for only a few months but i will say this, hiragana, katakana and kanji are not “three alphabets”

   hiragana represent japanese syllables used to spell native japanese words while katakana (the same syllables, just look a little different) are used to spell foreign loan words. kanji are completely separate. to me, they are more like emojis. they can represent different words/meanings based on context. i believe there are about 2k kanji that is most common that you are expected to learn.

   since you havent learned all the kana yet though, don’t worry about it too much now. learn and get comfortable with all hiragana and katakana first. i started learning vocab and grammar after learning the kana and im steadily but slowly learning kanji through anki and other study apps.

   edit: i recommend the app Human Japanese. i bought the full version which is only $9.99 I believe and its been worth it! great for beginners and offers a lot of explanation for everything

3. There are many apps for learning kanji, they will all have slightly different orders for learning them but the general progression is the same. If you have an android I can recommend this one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy

   There are also textbooks that teach you kanji, that you can buy online I presume. I myself haven’t used them so someone else would have to provide more detail.

   As to usage, and if you would let me be a little pedantic. These are not alphabets. Alphabets are sets of glyphs that represent a phoneme, aka a single sound. Like the english alphabet, or the cyrillic alphabet. Hiragana and Katakana are what are called syllabaries. This means that every glyph represents a syllable. In this case consonant-vowel syllable. The exceptions being the vowels and ん/ン which represent just one sound (although ん/ン really represent a couple different consonants, it’s still only one consonant at a time and not a syllable). Kanji are what are called logographs. This means that each glyph represents a morpheme or word or entire concept. It can vary a little. The main difference is that Kanji do not represent sounds, and that there are *way* more kanji than hiragana or katakana.

   All three systems are used in writing. The general rule is that hiragana is used for native japanese words and the grammatical parts of verbs and other grammatical stuff, katakana are used for non-chinese loanwords and onomatopoeia, and kanji are used for nouns and the non-grammatical part of verbs (i.e. the initial part). But of course these are not hard and fast rules, some things are more commonly written with just kana instead of kanji, sometimes you’ll see katakana used instead of complicated kanji, or for extra emphasis/distinction. It is more common in the exceptions that kanji are replaced with kana than the other way around tho.

   And people bend and break these “rules” for stylistic reasons all the time, especially outside of formal writing. In formal writing these “rules” are rarely broken unless it improves readability.