Hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Let's talk about it. So the very first thing that I always teach in the Japanese language are the three main writing systems. The reason is because the three main writing systems in Japanese is very unique, and that's because usually we're used to one writing system. For example, in English, we have the alphabet to spell everything out.
and to write English. However, in Japanese, depending on a word, for example, we write in hiragana, or we write in katakana, or we write in kanji. In order to master all three writing systems, all three writing systems, we need to know the differences between the three main writing systems.
Before we jump into the differences between the three, I have to explain to you that hiragana and katakana can be grouped into one category. called kana or kanamuji. And kanamuji is important to know because it is a phonetic syllabary whereas kanji is something we call an ideographic syllabary. A phonetic syllabary is basically a syllabary that has characters that only represent a sound or a pronunciation. What that means is for example in English, an alphabet letter, a character, for example a can only represent a sound.
It doesn't represent a meaning at all. And similarly, kana moji or kana, which includes hiragana and katakana, each character can only represent a sound. So the hiragana a or the katakana a can only represent that sound. Even though a hiragana character and a katakana character can read the same thing, the difference is is how it's written. For example, the hiragana i and the katakana i are written differently.
Now before we get into the differences between hiragana and katakana, I must explain to you the whole kana chart. Now the kana chart is pretty easy to remember as long as you know this one concept. So the kana syllabary starts with five main characters that you need to know which are the vowels.
A, I, U, E, O. And once you know this five these five letters in order then the rest is pretty easy. So as long as you memorize it of course. But ayueo is the first column. The second column is kakikukeko.
If you see a pattern here, all we're doing is adding a consonant to the vowels. So in the second column, we're adding the consonant ke. And by doing that, we can derive the five characters that come after the first. Column so I you a oh and then cocky cook a cup the next column is sassy So say so all we're doing is adding the consonant s or sh depending on the vowel There are exceptions of course for example the last Hiragana or the last Katakana is just the n consonant and nothing else There's no vowel that comes after and another concept that you need to remember is that each Hiragana or each katakana character represents one syllable. So in English, we have to clap our hands to break a word down into syllables, but in Japanese, each hiragana character or each katakana character can represent one syllable.
Now going into hiragana, hiragana is used for two reasons. One is if we're writing a sentence particle or a grammar particle, and the second reason is that we're writing terms that don't have a kanji. So going into the first reason which is about sentence particles, what a sentence particle does is it's essentially a glue that connects a term and another term in order to make meaning in a sentence.
For example, the sentence particle は is something that can appear in a sentence like 僕の名前はけんせいです. I'll be taking up sentence particles in another lesson, but all you need to know now is that 僕の名前はけんせいです. for all sentence particles we're writing in hiragana.
Now, for the second reason, hiragana can be used for words that don't have a kanji adapted to it. Now, I'll go and explain this in depth when we reach kanji, but essentially, what kanji does is it replaces hiragana characters, depending on the term, so the word itself. So if the word or the term can be replaced with a kanji, then we write it in kanji.
If we cannot, you can just simply write it in hiragana. Now going into katakana on the other hand, again we have two main reasons. Number one is if the word is foreign derived or if it is originated from a foreign language. So for example, the term toire in Japanese means the bathroom or the restroom and this comes from the word toilet in English.
And so since this is a foreign borrowed word, we use katakana to write toire in Japanese. So the second reason we used katakana is because the word itself is an onomatopoeia. And an onomatopoeia is basically sound effects, like boom, pow, bang. These type of sound effects will be written in katakana.
So for example, if I take out my manga here, Slam Dunk. As you can see, Okay, this is written in the opposite direction, but over here it says slam dunk in katakana. And that's because this term slam dunk is in English.
It's an English term, and that's why it's written in katakana. And if I flip to a random page, like over here, we have bang, bang, or oh. These are all sound effects and that's why they're written in katakana not hiragana. So to recap, the reason why we use hiragana is because the word is a sentence particle. If it's a sentence particle then we're writing in hiragana.
Or if the term or the word itself doesn't have a kanji then we write it in hiragana. And we use katakana when the term itself is derived from a foreign language. So for example if it comes from an From English, comes from French, Spanish, or any language other than maybe Chinese, it is written in katakana. And for onomatopoeia or any sound effect, we also write that in katakana. So one quick question here.
If your name is Daniel, how would you write Daniel in Japanese? Would you use hiragana? Would you use katakana? The answer is obviously... katakana because Daniel is a foreign name so that's why we have to use katakana.
And finally the last writing system which is kanji and it's something that we don't have in the English language. Now like I said earlier kanji is an ideographic syllabary and what that means is that each character can represent a meaning and a pronunciation. So for example the very first kanji that I always teach as an example to my students is water. It means water. And this kanji character has two pronunciations, mizu and sui.
And depending on the word, or depending on that term, we're using the mizu pronunciation or the sui pronunciation. I will teach you about kanji pronunciations and more on kanji in a later lesson, but for now, what you need to know is that One character can have multiple pronunciations, and also a character will essentially represent a certain meaning. Now, the striking question when it comes to kanji is that people may ask, why do we use such a complicated writing system when we can just write everything in hiragana and katakana? Wouldn't that be much easier than having these hard, like, complicated characters in the middle of a sentence? Well, that is a very good question, but...
the answer is very straightforward. A sentence is going to be really long if we write everything in hiragana and because of that the kanji has a role of abbreviating things. So like I said earlier, the kanji mizu can represent two hiragana characters, right? mizu or sui.
So as a result, when we when we're writing mizu in a sentence, instead of writing two hiragana characters, we can punch in the kanji mizu and make that sentence shorter. And remember, kanji can represent more than one, more than one, more than two, more than three hiragana characters. It just depends on the kanji itself.
Another very important reason are homophones. Homophones are basically terms that sound the same, that are pronounced the same way, but are written differently. But that's in English.
In English, the way we distinguish two homophones is one number one context of the full sentence and two the spelling of that term for example the term hay and hay like the plant hay that horses eat those two are written differently because they're spelled differently instead of e in hay we use an a for the plant hay But for Japanese, like I said earlier, each character usually represents a consonant and a vowel, and each character is one syllable. That's why it makes it harder to spell the same word differently with hiragana. And as a result, a homophone, for example, ame, which is candy, and ame, which is rain, is literally just a and me, hiragana characters together.
And so in order to fix this problem, what we do is we put the kanji ame for candy in a sentence instead of just the hiragana characters, or we write the kanji ame for rain in that sentence. And by doing so, we can can identify what we're exactly talking about because the kanji is unique to that meaning. Now lastly, I just want to briefly explain to you how you're going to learn these three writing systems.
Number one, hiragana and katakana you should memorize in at least a month or two months. And like I said earlier, they both follow the same syllabary. They're both following the kana syllabary except they're just written differently so you have to memorize them individually. What I usually recommend is to memorize a whole column, usually in one week.
So for example, Ayue, you memorize that column, and you go for the next column, next column, next column. By a month, you'll be able to memorize Hiragana. And same with Katakana, you memorize each column in one week, and write the characters on a piece of paper repeatedly, and you can memorize that way.
And now, as for Kanji, there are... thousands and thousands of kanji characters. So I'm not saying you have to memorize all of them.
In fact, I believe it is impossible to memorize all of them. But what you can do is try to memorize 2000. Now it sounds a lot, and it is a lot. But the reason why I say 2000 kanji is because there is something called joyo kanji.
And what it basically is, it's the 2000 most important kanji that you need to know in order to write to Japanese. So as long as you know your Jōyō Kanji, you should be fine. So by the end of your Japanese studies, try to memorize 2000. In fact, the JLPT N1 will take up to 2000 Kanji.
So make sure you keep that in mind and try to memorize Kanji on a daily basis. So that's all for today's lesson about Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. But for more of my lessons, especially on Kanji, which I'll teach later on or maybe after this lesson, So in order to catch up to those, make sure to like, subscribe, and comment if you have any questions. And also, if you want to participate in any of my other platforms, for example, Discord or Amino, just make sure to check my YouTube profile and you can go find the links on the top right of my page.
So until then, mata ne!