The Writing System

Japanese doesn't have alphabets rather it has syllabaries called Kana (かな).  This means that instead of having one letter representing an alphabet, there are two letters (a consonant and a vowel) to represent a sound, except for the five vowels and n.

Japanese also has two kinds of syllabaries that have the same sounds:

• Hiragana (ひらがな)
• Katakana (カタカナ)

(Each of these represent the same 48 sounds)

Hiragana, is associated with words of Japanese origin and Katakana is associated with words of foreign origin.

Kanji (かんじ), are another set of characters used in Japanese, which are Chinese characters. These characters are very commonly used in Japanese, mostly in written work so as to simplify reading. This might be difficult for us beginners because there are around 40,000 characters BUT we would only be forced to learn the most commonly used (Jouyou) Kanji which is around 2000.

Without Kanji, we won't be able to read news or books, or even menus. The only books we would be able to read are children's books because they usually have those two kana above the kanji.

My advice:

Learn a few Kanji every month starting from the first-graders level.You can learn it the way they do in Japanese schools with Namiko Abe.

To start you should only concentrate on learning and memorising Hiragana and Katakana. Until you perfect writing them, you can start with some basic Kanji. See you next lesson

Photo:  Chieko Baisho