I’m considering a trip to Japan in the future and I love langauge learning so I started casually looking at learning a little bit of Japanese and I was seeing reference to 3 different alphabets: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. I read a little bit about them but I’m still somewhat confused on the differences between them and how/when are each used? And if I’m casually learning for future travel, is one better to learn?
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Hiragana and katakana are “syllabaries” — like an alphabet, but syllables instead of letters. For example: KA – KE – KI – KU – KO are 5 of the syllables in Japanese. These are used to “spell out” words which can also be written in kanji, which is a picture that means a word.
For example, books or graphic novels which may have a younger or foreign audience, who are not expected to know as many kanji, may have the syllables written in below more complicated kanji so the word can be sounded out and understood.
As for when you would use each syllabary: hiragana is used for native Japanese words, and katakana is used for foreign words adopted into the language (“loan words”). Loan words are often (but not always!) English, so if you know katakana you can often figure out katakana words by sounding out the syllables:
KO – N – PYUU – TA
Oh! That’s “computer”!
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