The Japanese Alphabet: Hiragana and Katakana

How do you write in Japanese?

English is pretty easy- we have 26 letters and a couple symbols, and can form any word using these Roman characters. However, it's a bit more complicated in Japanese! Here is some information about how the Japanese writing system works.

Hiragana and Katakana

Hiragana and Katakana are the two base writing systems for Japanese. Each has characters which represent the 46 sounds used to speak Japanese, so you can write any word after knowing these!

In order for western learners to understand Japanese when they are learning, we often write words in "Romanji". Romanji is the romanized form of Japanese sounds and pronunciations. For example, "sushi" is technically Romanji. Romanji is essentially the name for when you write Japanese words using Roman characters.

Hiragana「ひらがな」

First is Hiragana. Any word that is native to Japan is written in Hiragana- like "sushi", "konnichiwa", or "hiragana".

Courtesy of TakeLessons

Katakana「カタカナ」

Katakana is the less common, but still necessary to know counterpart to Hiragana. It's used for any word that is not native to Japan- including words derived from other languages. For example, アルバイト, "arubaito", comes from the German word "Arbeit" and means "part-time job". Names that are not of Japanese origin, like mine (Deven) are also spelled with Katakana- I spell mine as デヴェン, which sounds out as "Deven" as well.

Courtesy of JapanesePod101

There are a lot more characters to memorize than in English, but the Japanese phonetic system is a lot kinder than the English one. We'll go over those in a future blog post, so look out for that!

Do you like the Japanese writing system? What Hiragana or Katakana character is your favorite? Feel free to comment below.