Perhaps most important to learning Japanese is understanding the language's writing system. Beginning to read and write in the language will be crucial to approaching and interacting with the world of Japanese content. In fact, because we focus on using native Japanese content to learn, we at nihonkarano.com believe that learning the fundamentals of reading Japanese is the crucial first step in your Japanese journey.

The Japanese writing system has many differences from the English writing that you're reading this lesson in, the most basic and obvious difference being that it uses entirely different characters.

In this lesson, we will go over the three types of characters in Japanese and how they are used to express thoughts in writing.

Example Sentence

We will examine a simple example sentence to better understand the use of the three different writing systems of Japanese:

私がマイケルだ。

watashi ga maikeru da.

I am Michael.

Let's break the sentence down into its components:

Do you notice anything about the characters used to write any of these words? Even if you are a complete newcomer to Japanese, you may notice that the character が (ga) has more curved strokes in comparison to the "blocky" look of マイケル (MAIKERU), or that 私 (watashi) looks more complex than any of the other characters in the sentence, containing several more strokes.

These differences are in fact because these three words are written using entirely different sets of characters. Japanese writing consists of three different scripts which together are used to express sentences.

The Three Writing Systems of Japanese

The three scripts of Japanese are as follows:

ひらがな (hiragana): Hiragana is the backbone of Japanese writing, used for native words, grammatical elements, and when the Kanji isn’t known or needed. Its fluid, cursive style makes it beginner-friendly and essential for mastering Japanese sentence structure. In our example sentence, the Hiragana characters が (ga) and だ (da) are used for grammatical expressions. This script comprises 46 characters representing syllables (more on this later).

カタカナ (katakana): Much like Hiragana, Katakana also contains 46 characters. However, it serves a different purpose, representing foreign words, onomatopoeic terms, and emphasis. For instance, in our sentence, one word is written in Katakana: マ (ma) イ (i) ケ (ke) ル (ru). This is because the word is a phonetic representation of an English word, Michael, in Japanese writing. Katakana characters can often be recognized by their blocky shape.

漢字 (kanji): This script involves Chinese characters integrated into Japanese writing. With thousands of characters, each representing a word or concept, Kanji is more complex than the other scripts. Also of note is that, unlike Hiragana and Katakana, individual Kanji characters do not necessarily map to syllables. In our sentence, one word is written using Kanji: 私 (watashi, I).

Understanding of these distinct scripts is vital for navigating written Japanese. As you may have noticed, written Japanese does not often feature spaces between words, meaning distinguishing between the different scripts is crucial to breaking down a sentence into its word components.

Example Sentence Revisited

Looking at our example sentence again:

私がマイケルだ。

watashi ga maikeru da.

I am Michael.

With the knowledge that 私 (watashi, I) and マイケル (maikeru, Michael) are written in Kanji and Katakana characters respectively, we can begin to see that this sentence revolves around these two nouns.

After that, the remaining Hiragana characters describe the nouns' grammatical relation. が (ga, the subject particle) marks 私 (watashi, I) as the subject of the sentence, and だ (da, copula, "am") tells us that that subject has an equality with the other noun, マイケル (maikeru, Michael).

Therefore, we can put together the meaning of the sentence: "I am Michael."

Conclusion

Now that you understand the basic usage of Japanese writing's three character sets, you can begin to learn the characters themselves. Here at nihonkarano.com, we have pages dedicated to learning Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

In our next lesson, Reading and Writing in Japanese II, we will cover the syllabary that maps to Hiragana and Katakana characters, then in Reading and Writing in Japanese III we will continue on to an exploration of basic Kanji.

Until next time,

これからもよろしくお願いします。

kore kara mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu