What is Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Romaji in Japanese Language?
BASICS
If you have just started learning Japanese then you must have heard these words/terms somewhere or you might not know about them yet. In any case you must know these 4 words/terms in order to learn Japanese fast and easily.
So let's get to the main points.
Basic Terms that you need to know while learning Japanese.
- Hiragana
- Katakana
- Kanji
- Romaji
There are 3 Character sets in Japanese Language:
- Hiragana
- Katakana
- Kanji
Note: Hiragana and Katakana often called by the name KANA only.
1. What is Hiragana in Japanese Language? (briefly)
- Hiragana is a one of the 3 character sets in the Japanese language. Which is widely used to form a sentence.
- There are 46 hiragana symbols/characters in Japanese.
- Each hiragana character has a particular sound but no independent meaning.
- Download Hiragana Chart From Here
- This is how Hiragana looks like: (image below)
2. What is Katakana in Japanese Language? (briefly)
- Katakana is a one of the 3 character sets in the Japanese language. Which is widely used to form a sentence using foreign words.
- There are 46 Katakana symbols/characters in Japanese.
- Each Katakana character has a particular sound but no independent meaning.
- Katakana is mostly used for the Foreign words. Each letter/character of katakana represents the sound of syllable like English Alphabets (ABCD...XYZ)
- The main difference between hiragana and katakana is that hiragana is used to represent Japanese words, while katakana used for foreign words.
- Download Katakana Chart From Here
- This is how Katakana looks like:
3. What is Kanji in Japanese Language? (briefly)
- Kanji is a another writing system of Japanese language that uses some adopted Chinese characters.
- Kanji is mostly used to write nouns, adjectives, and verbs in Japanese.
- Unlike hiragana and katakana, each kanji symbol/character can represent a word with sound.
- Same Kanji symbols can have different meanings and pronunciations depending on the other symbols they’re matched with.
- Kanji characters have 2 readings:
- "On-Yomi (Chinese Reading)"
- "Kun-Yomi (Japanese Reading)"
- To master the kanji you have to practice very very hard and have to remember both the readings.
- This is how kanji looks like:
4. Kana and Romaji (What is the difference Between Kana and Romaji?)
- Romaji is basically romanization of the Japanese written language.
- It shows how to pronounce kana and kanji (useful for beginners)
- Usually beginners rely on Romaji to learn the pronunciation of kana and kanji. Which is totally fine considering you are just starting.
Personal Advice: For starter it's fine to rely on Romaji to learn pronunciation but after a while you
should use kana (hiragana/katakana) to learn new words or to read Japanese textbooks/sentences.
- Examples or Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Romaji
- こんにちは。- This is in hiragana. (Hiragana is used for Japanese Words)
- Konnichiwa. - This is in Romaji
- Hello - This is English Translation
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- アメリカ - This is in Katakana. (Katakana is used for Foreign Words)
- America - This is in Romaji (pronounced as Aa-merica)
- America - This is English Translation
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- 川 - This is in Kanji.
- Kawa. - This is in Romaji
- River - This is English Translation
Thank you for reading What is Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Romaji in Japanese Language?
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