Overview of Writting

Originally, Japanese was a purely spoken language with no system of writting. But when they came in contact with the Koreans, they adopted the Chinese system of writting. These characters are called Kanji. Kanji are pictographs which means each one represents a meaning or word. Kanji are a difficult and unique system of writting that has two common viewpoints:
-Hopless and complicated
-Interesting and beautiful

The viewpoint you wish to hold is up to you, but know that anyone who can't read kanji is illiterate.

The Japanese eventually simplified a few of these characters to create 2 "alphabets" or syllabries. We call them syllabries because each character doesn't represent a sound, but rather an entire consonant. For example, there is no character for the letter K, but instead 5 characters: KA, KI, KU, KE, and KO. The two syllabries are called hiragana and katakana and together, they are known as simply kana.

So Japanese writting contains hiragana, katakana, and kanji as well as Aribic numbers (1,2,3) and occasional Roman letters (A,B,C). Each set of characters has its own purpose.

Kanji
Kanji are used to write:
-Most nouns
-Most verbs
-Most adjectives
-Oriental names

Kanji are backbone of the language. Don't fear the great number of kanji that are used in Japanese. You learn them only a few at a time and it has been proven that it is easier to memorize ideographs than letters because they have meaning.

Hiragana
Hiragana is the cursive kana syllabry. Hiragana is used to write:
-Postpositions
-Verb and adjective endings
-Japanese names without a kanji -Words that don't have a kanji or ones with difficult or rare kanji
-Whenever you feel the kanji isn't neccessary

Also, childrens books are usually all in hiragana (and maybe some simple kanji).

Katakana
Katakana is the angular syllabry. Katakana is to write:
-Non-Chinese foreign words (ie, English import words)
-Foreign names

One nice thing about Japanese is a great deal of it is words borrowed from English. Though the pronounciations are altered, they are easier to remember.

Traditionally, Japanese is written vertically, starting in the upper right hand corner. However, modern Japanese can be written both vertically and horizontally. In general writting, spaces are not used in between characters. Kanji help to indicate where one word ends and another begins. But in children's books that don't use kanji and electronics which cannot display many kanji, spaces are used, but with no strict rules. The Japanese distinction between words is a lot less percise than ours.

You should begin learning hiragana first with my hiragana lessons. Afterwards, go on to the katakana lessons. Even though kanji are the most important element of Japanese writting, you can express anything you want if you only know hiragana and katakana. Also, kanji are a bit complicated and I will dedicate a couple of chapters to learning how they work.

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