Nihongo Ninja

What are Japanese Pictographs? Last time, we looked at Hiragana and Katakana, the two writing systems that can be used to write any word in Japanese. However, there is a third writing system- Kanji, with over 7,000 characters to learn. Kanji Basics Kanji are symbols which represent ideas or words, and can be read differently based off of their context. For example, the kanji for ‘book’ 「本」 is read simply as ほん , “hon”, ‘book’ by itself. However, when combined with other kanji, its meaning changes. When combined for the kanji for ‘thing’ 「物」、 you form a kanji compound meaning “genuine thing”- ほんもの , “honmono”. Other kanji get completely different pronunciations based off of their context as well. For example, the kanji for “now”, 「今」、 ”ima” becomes “kon” with some other kanji, used to make words like 今夏、 ”konka”, ‘this summer’. Sometimes, even if you don’t know the secondary readings of kanji, you can guess the meaning of compounds. For example, the following compound: 「火山」 ...

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". C...