Introduction to Japanese writing

The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:

• Kanji — about 50,000 characters, each with it's own meaning. Although it is necessary to know only 2,000 of them to comfortly read Japanese text.
• Hiragana — 46 characters that represent syllables.
• Katakana — 46 different characters that represent the same syllables as hiragana.

Also there is rōmaji — japanese language written in roman characters. It is mostly used by beginners who are learning japanese and cannot read kana and kanji.

Kanji (漢字)

Kanji was the first writing script in Japan. It was imported from China around the middle of the 6th century AD. The Japanese term "kanji" means "Chinese characters". Kanji are ideographs meaning that the whole character conveys a meaning rather than just a sound (as in the case of hiragana and katakana letters). Kanji were originally drawn as pictures from nature but gradually transformed to more generalized representations.

For example, look at these kanji characters:

There are about 50,000 kanji characters. But you do not need to know all of them to read Japanese. Children at Japanese schools learn only 1,006 kanji characters from grades one to six and through junior highschool. And in highschool they complement their kanji knowledge up to 1,945 characters. Knowing all these "Education kanji" (Joyo kanji) allows you to read most of Japanese text without any problems.

But before learning kanji it is extremely important to learn Hiragana and Katakana.

Hiragana (ひらがな)

Hiragana is collection of 46 characters, each representing a different sound. Hiragana and Katakana allows to write down any Japanese word or even setence, but most of the time it is used to express "grammatical" elements such as particles, and endings of adjectives, etc. Also Japanese people sometimes use hiragana to write words if they forget a kanji character for them. Japanese children start to read and write Japanese all in hiragana before making an attempt to learn some of the two thousand kanji currently used.

This table represents the basic Hiragana characters:

To start learning basic Hiragana characters use my Hiragana and Katakana quiz game. It's the best way to start learning Hiragana. And to practice reading hiragana characters use my Hiragana and Katakana practice game. In both games you can switch character set between Hiragana and Katakana at any time.

In addition to basic Hiragana characters there are dakuten and handakuten characters. They are formed by adding quote-like mark ( ゛ — dakuten) or small circle mark ( ゜ — handakuten) to the character. For example: if we have ひ (hi), by adding a dakuten we get び (bi), and by adding handakuten we get ぴ (pi). This works only for few characters, and there are some exceptions, but it's not hard to learn.

Here is the table of dakuten and handakuten characters:

These characters sometimes are refered to as "extended Hiragana".

And final step in learning Hiragana is learning yōon characters. These characters are formed by adding a smaller や (ya), ゆ (yu) or よ (yo) to other Hiragana characters. For example び (bi) and ゅ (small yu) combine into びゅ (byu). These characters are also easy to learn if you already know basic and extended Hiragana.

And now i've listed all hiragana characters. If you intend to learn Hiragana you don't have to memorize all these characters at once. Start with basic characters and when you feel you are ready, proceed to dakuten and handakuten (extended Hiragana) characters and only after learning them proceed to yōon characters.

You can use my quiz and practice games to learn the characters. In both games you can switch level between basic, extended (basic + dakuten and handakuten) and full (all Hiragana characters) at any time.

Katakana (カタカナ)

Hiragana is another collection of 46 characters, each representing the same sounds the Katakana characters do. Think of it as Hiragana with each character substituted by a totally new character. Katakana characters have fewer strokes and are easier to write. The purpose of creating a simplified copy of hiragana was to make the characters that you can write down quickly (for stenography). Now it is most commonly used to write foreign and loan words. For example: english word "bus" is written in Japanese as バス (basu), and "door" is written as ドア (doa).

This table represents the basic Katakana characters:

You can learn an practice katakana characters by using my Hiragana and Katakana quiz game and Hiragana and Katakana practice game. In both games you can switch character set between Hiragana and Katakana at any time.

Katakana also has dakuten and handakuten characters. They are formed the same way as in Hiragana: by adding quote-like mark ( ゛ — dakuten) or small circle mark ( ゜ — handakuten) to the character. For example: if we have ヒ (hi), by adding a dakuten we get ビ (bi), and by adding handakuten we get ピ (pi). This works exactly the same way as in Hiragana.

Here is the table of dakuten and handakuten characters:

These characters sometimes are refered to as "extended Katakana".

Katakana also has yōon characters. These characters are formed by adding a smaller ャ (ya), ュ (yu) or ョ (yo) to other Katakana characters. For example ビ (bi) and ュ (small yu) combine into ビュ (byu). These characters are also easy to learn if you already know basic and extended Katakana.

That's it. These are all Hiragana and Katakana characters.

You can use my quiz and practice games to learn the characters. In both games you can switch level (basic, extended or full) and character set (Hiragana and Katakana).

Please learn the Hiragana and Katakana before learning Kanji. Knowing these two writing scripts greatly improves speed of learning the language. After learning them you will be able to read some Japanese words. Also there are many excercises on the internet that require knowledge of kanas.

But if you haven't learned the kanas yet, you can use rōmaji.

Rōmaji

Rōmaji is just a romanization of Japanese language. It uses roman (english) letters to write the Japanese words. For example: word "hiragana" is a rōmaji version of ひらがな. All translations in the kana tables above are written in romaji.

Rōmaji is rarely used by Japanese people. It's mostly used by people who just begun to learn Japanese and are lazy enough to learn Hiragana and Katakana.