There are four common alphabets in the Japanese language, and they are all important to learn as they are almost always interchangeable.
Hiragana (ひらがな)
Japanese syllabary used for grammar and with small children.
Katakana (カタカナ)
Similar to hiragana but used for foreign words, onomatopoeia and making Japanese words or sentences stand out. The difference between hiragana and katakana is that hiragana is cursive and katakana is angular.
Kanji (漢字)
Chinese characters used to represent words. The use of kanji helps distinguish words in a sentence, because the Japanese don’t use spaces.
Hiragana (ひらがな)
Japanese syllabary used for grammar and with small children.
Katakana (カタカナ)
Similar to hiragana but used for foreign words, onomatopoeia and making Japanese words or sentences stand out. The difference between hiragana and katakana is that hiragana is cursive and katakana is angular.
Kanji (漢字)
Chinese characters used to represent words. The use of kanji helps distinguish words in a sentence, because the Japanese don’t use spaces.
Okurigana (送り仮名)
Kana that come after kun-yomi (native Japanese readings) kanji-stems. They are used to differentiate one pronunciation from another that uses the same kanji.
Furigana (振り仮名)
Small kana that appears above kanji and beside normal-sized kana. When they are used above kanji, they help you read the kanji’s pronunciation. When they are used beside normal-sized kana, they make a new sound (see part 2).
Romaji (ローマ字)
Romaji is the Romanization of Japanese used with foreigners who can’t read the Japanese alphabets. Hiragana, katakana and romaji use the same phonetics system.
Furigana (振り仮名)
Small kana that appears above kanji and beside normal-sized kana. When they are used above kanji, they help you read the kanji’s pronunciation. When they are used beside normal-sized kana, they make a new sound (see part 2).
Romaji (ローマ字)
Romaji is the Romanization of Japanese used with foreigners who can’t read the Japanese alphabets. Hiragana, katakana and romaji use the same phonetics system.
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5 comments:
Cool blog. Here's a link you might find useful: Japanese keyboard
Thanks, Anne! That'll come in handy. :p
I hope you found this post useful.
I couldn't find anywhere to comment seperately, so I'm 'replying' to your comment! :-)
I'm a little confused, since you say at the top of this post there's 4 kinds of alphabet, but then it looks like you list 6. I recognise the first three (hiragana, katakana and kanji) as types of Japanese writing, but am not sure which is the 4th, or whether there's actually 6. Could you please enlighten me? Cheers!
Whoops, I'll just clarify that for you now! I'm not sure why you can't comment, but I'll try to fix that too. :)
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