A while ago I wrote a blog post about the difference between Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Here, I mentionned that the Japanese language has three different scripts: kanji (Chinese characters), and hiragana and katakana (Japanese alphabets). To give a little more clarity about how these three are used together, I want to shortly talk about what each of these scripts mean.
History
The Chinese script existed before the other two Japanese alphabets. Before Japan develloped its own script, they started using the Chinese script to write. Chinese characters first came to Japan as inscriptions on objects that were brought to Japan.
At first texts were written in Chinese, because Japanese only existed in oral form. Later, they started using the Chinese characters (kanji) to write in Japanese, despite the difference in grammar. THey wrote the Chinese character in the order that they should be written in according to Japanese grammar (so differently from a Chinese sentence), and added extra characters to overcome the grammatical diferences. There were also some Chinese characters that were used based on their sound, instead of their meaning, so that they could write Japanese words with these characters.
The latter led to the existance of the two Japanese alphabets: hiragana and katakana, which are now used together with kanji to write Japanese. This goes as follows:
Kanji
These are the actual Chinese characters, and they each have their own meaning. These characters are used for words that have a certain content, like nouns, and the stems of verbs and adjectives.
Kanji also have different pronunciations: the Chinese pronunciation (that came to Japan together with the written characters), and the Japanese pronunciation (the Japanese word that already existed and for which they now use the character).
There are examples of words that are written with the same characters, but depending on the pronunciation (Japanese or Chinese), have a slightly different meaning. For example the word 市場. This word can be pronounced as shijou (the Chinese pronunciation), and than stands for the concept of the economical market, of it can be pronounced as ichiba (the Japanese pronunciation), and then it means a market place (like a flea market).
This script has thousands of characters, but about two thousand of them are called the jōyō kanji. These are the most important kanji, that are used on a regular basis in daily life.
Hiragana
Hiragana counts 48 characters and is a phonetic alphabet. This means that these characters only have one pronunciation, and have no meaning of their own (they are purely phonetic, just like our own alphabet). Hiragana is mostly used for grammatical functions (for example stems of verbs, particles, etc.), but also for words that don’t have kanji, of of which the kanji is very difficult and rarely used.
In the past, hiragana was used a lot by women, who weren’t able to have higher education and therefore didn’t learn how to write kanji.
Katakana
Just like hiragana, katakana has 48 characters and is a purely phonetic alphabet (so the characters have no meaning). Katakana is mostly used for loanwords (for example the word テレビ, which is pronounced as terebi and originates from the word “television”). But it is also used for names of plant and animal species (which can be written in both kanji and katakana), onomatopoeias, and to put emphasis on certain words.
Katakana can also be used to show people’s accents. For example in manga, when a foreigner is speaking Japanese, they can use katakana instead of hiragana to show that this person has a foreign accent.
Conclusion
Because it is difficult to only use Chinese characters while writing a Japanese text, the Japanese invented hiragana and katakana, and now use all three script together.
It may seem a bit complicated, but the way these three scripts work together is actually very interesting. And if you understand the language a bit better, it is actually also quite easy.
I noticed myself as well, that when I try to read a text that is only written in hiragana, is it not so easy. I seem to have difficulty seeing where words start and end. When a text uses the different scripts, this is much clearer. Becaus of this, it is easier to read a text that also uses kanji and katakana.
Except of course when it contains a lot of kanji I can’t read…
One Of The Two 