Hello, I’m very new to the Japanese language I know that Japanese uses three different writing systems. I’m a bit confused on when and how is each should be used. Does it even matter? Thanks
It matters but it’s not so cut and dry as “ひらがな is used for such and such” and “カタカナ is used for so and so”. Generally, ひらがな is used with kanji in the majority of written japanese and for furigana, and カタカナ is used for loan words, animal sounds, onomatopoeia and for emphasis in certain situations (sort of like how italics are used in english). There’s lots of articles and such written about it and it’s not that hard to find if you are curious.
Anything written in kanji may also be written in hiragana, although it’s probably best to use kanji yourself (and CERTAINLY be able to at least recognize most of the common ones, my advice here is just start by learning kanji as you learn vocabulary that use them). Most words that aren’t written in kanji can either be written in hiragana or katakana (there’s a few that could be written in either but no too many) so again just learn which system is used alongside each word. (Katakana is usually used for recently borrowed foreign words while Japanese words are usually in hiragana/kanji. Yes you have to learn both and there’s no way around it. Yes you should learn some basic kanji. No you don’t *have* to be able to replicate them in handwriting but I’d highly suggest learning the stroke orders for certainly the ABSOLUTE MOST BASIC ~50 or so and probably for a few hundred as you learn over the years.)
Katakana: phonetic system used for non-japanese words and nouns….often called “loan” or “borrowed” words
Kanji: introduced in mordern Japanese…a single kanji by itself can have varying meanings and pronunciations…if you know your kanji, you will rarely have a problem doing any reading…you can also take an educated guess at words you may not know based on the context of the sentence and the kanji it may be written with…keep in mind even though so many words can be written in kanji, a lot of words are written in hiragana alone
Hiragana: main phonetic system of the language…used a lot…but mostly in grammar to connect words/sentences and in the middle of.words…as mentioned before there are also words that are typically written in only hiragana
Hiragana, katakana and kanji all follow the same phonetic system..there are the same amount of characters and sounds in hiragana, as there are in katakana….in kanji, although it is the same sound system, there are thousands of kanji…
The sound system closely resembles Spanish, but it still different…
You may see words written in just kanji, or with a mix of kanji and hiragana…as katakana is mainly used for loan words, you will not see them together….
TL;DR: all of them.are used…you cant say you know Japanese without knowing kanji…and kana (both hira and kata) are the part foundation of the language
Don’t worry about when to use which one as a beginner! (And definitely don’t lock yourself into rules of thumb so early in your studies.)
After seeing many a sentence in Japanese, and being corrected on your usage, you will start to form an intuition about when to use which.
4 comments
It matters but it’s not so cut and dry as “ひらがな is used for such and such” and “カタカナ is used for so and so”. Generally, ひらがな is used with kanji in the majority of written japanese and for furigana, and カタカナ is used for loan words, animal sounds, onomatopoeia and for emphasis in certain situations (sort of like how italics are used in english). There’s lots of articles and such written about it and it’s not that hard to find if you are curious.
Anything written in kanji may also be written in hiragana, although it’s probably best to use kanji yourself (and CERTAINLY be able to at least recognize most of the common ones, my advice here is just start by learning kanji as you learn vocabulary that use them). Most words that aren’t written in kanji can either be written in hiragana or katakana (there’s a few that could be written in either but no too many) so again just learn which system is used alongside each word. (Katakana is usually used for recently borrowed foreign words while Japanese words are usually in hiragana/kanji. Yes you have to learn both and there’s no way around it. Yes you should learn some basic kanji. No you don’t *have* to be able to replicate them in handwriting but I’d highly suggest learning the stroke orders for certainly the ABSOLUTE MOST BASIC ~50 or so and probably for a few hundred as you learn over the years.)
Katakana: phonetic system used for non-japanese words and nouns….often called “loan” or “borrowed” words
Kanji: introduced in mordern Japanese…a single kanji by itself can have varying meanings and pronunciations…if you know your kanji, you will rarely have a problem doing any reading…you can also take an educated guess at words you may not know based on the context of the sentence and the kanji it may be written with…keep in mind even though so many words can be written in kanji, a lot of words are written in hiragana alone
Hiragana: main phonetic system of the language…used a lot…but mostly in grammar to connect words/sentences and in the middle of.words…as mentioned before there are also words that are typically written in only hiragana
Hiragana, katakana and kanji all follow the same phonetic system..there are the same amount of characters and sounds in hiragana, as there are in katakana….in kanji, although it is the same sound system, there are thousands of kanji…
The sound system closely resembles Spanish, but it still different…
You may see words written in just kanji, or with a mix of kanji and hiragana…as katakana is mainly used for loan words, you will not see them together….
TL;DR: all of them.are used…you cant say you know Japanese without knowing kanji…and kana (both hira and kata) are the part foundation of the language
Don’t worry about when to use which one as a beginner! (And definitely don’t lock yourself into rules of thumb so early in your studies.)
After seeing many a sentence in Japanese, and being corrected on your usage, you will start to form an intuition about when to use which.