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About Japanese Writing |
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The development of writing in Japan has a fascinating history. The Japanese originally had no writing system of their own. They first encountered writing in Chinese Buddhist texts brought from China via Korea around the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. |
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Borrowing Chinese characters for their meaning gave rise to the modern use of kanji, and using Chinese characters for their sound gave rise to the kana syllabaries. |
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Kanji |
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The Japanese word for Chinese characters is kanji. A kanji is a graphic symbol that represents the meaning, rather than the sound, of the word it stands for. Kanji pronunciations must be memorized.
Japanese learn to read and write about 2,000 kanji in school. A person with an average education is familiar with roughly 3,000 characters. Kanji and kana are used together to write most text in Japanese. |
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Kana |
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Kana are symbols that are used to represent the sounds of the Japanese language. They can be used like an alphabet to "spell out" any Japanese word. In general, each kana symbol represents a combination of one consonant plus one vowel sound, or a single syllable, like "ka," "so," or "mu." For this reason, the complete set of kana symbols is called a "syllabary." |
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Japanese use two different kana syllabaries, each with 46 basic symbols. Both syllabaries represent the same set of sounds, but they are used for different purposes. One kana syllabary is called the hiragana, which are used to write native Japanese words and word endings for which there are no kanji. |
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The second kana syllabary is called the katakana. Katakana are typically used to spell out foreign words and names, or they may be used for emphasis the way Westerners use italics. |
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