N5 Course
Chapter 1

Japanese Writing Systems

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Intro

Lesson #1

ポケット日本語

You’ve probably already noticed Japanese doesn’t use the roman alphabet for writing. Below I’ll go over the 3 alphabets used in Japanese, as well as some basic information regarding learning the Japanese language.

  • About a thousand years ago in Japan, people wrote using Chinese characters called "kanji."

    But kanji was hard to learn and took a long time to write. So, people wanted an easier way to write Japanese words.

  • Japanese monks and scholars began to create simpler characters by taking parts of kanji.

    They developed a new script called "hiragana."

  • It was like a set of shortcuts or abbreviations.

    Hiragana was easier and quicker to write, making it perfect for everyday use.

  • At first, hiragana was mostly used by women.

    Men still used kanji for official documents.

  • Many women wrote beautiful poetry, stories, and diaries in hiragana. One famous example is "The Tale of Genji," written by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu.

    Over time, everyone saw how useful hiragana was, and it became popular with both men and women.

  • Around the same time, Japanese monks were busy studying Buddhist texts, which were written in Chinese.

    To help them read and understand these texts, the monks started using parts of Chinese characters to create a simpler script. This new script was called “katakana.”

  • Katakana was made by taking small sections of complex Chinese characters.

    It was like creating a set of shortcuts or abbreviations.

  • Originally, katakana was used by monks and scholars in the margins of Chinese texts to show how to pronounce the Chinese characters in Japanese.

    It acted like a pronunciation guide. Over time, it became useful for other purposes too.

  • While hiragana became popular for everyday writing and literary works, katakana found its niche in different areas.

    It was used for writing foreign words, technical and scientific terms, and sometimes for emphasis, much like italics in English.

  • While hiragana and katakana were created to simplify writing, kanji remained because it adds depth and precision to the language.

    Instead of completely replacing kanji, Japan adapted by using all three scripts together. This combination allows for a rich, expressive way of writing that captures the full range of the Japanese language.

  • ひらがな

    Hiragana are the equivalent of an alphabet in Japanese. There are 46 primary characters, and then a few dozen variations.

    Everything in Japanese can be written in Hiragana, yetnot everything is…

    Hiragana are simple, rounded characters. As Hiragana is a phonetic alphabet, each character represents a sound.

  • カタカナ

    Katakana are primarily used for loan words, for example words borrowed from English. It can also be used to emphasise a word.

    There are 46, plus variants. They’re known for their simple, pointy characteristics. Each character represents a sound.

  • 漢字

    Kanji originated from China. There are 1000’s of Kanji and they generally look more complex than Katakana and hiragana.

    They are the 2nd most common behind hiragana, and the hardest to learn.

    Kanji are symbols rather than an alphabet, each with a unique meaning.

NOTE: For the first few lessons we will use some ‘romaji’, the romanised version of Japanese. It is not an official alphabet.

For example, the romaji for ‘わたし’ is ‘wa-ta-shi’, which is the Japanese word for ‘I/me’.