why there’s 3 ways to write the same word in Japanese?

Question

I’m vaguely aware there’s something like 3 alphabets kanji, hiragana, and katakana. I also read that katakana is used for foreign words, but for some words there is a way to use all 3 alphabets. I guess im more so wondering what would be the appropriate use for each, so F.E, mint. I found a kanji and katakana but also maybe hiragana way. 造幣局 ミント みんと

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Answer 1

Hiragana and Katakana are very similar and more like the difference between Latin alphabet written in cursive and printed rather than completely different systems.

They are both syllabries where each character represents a syllable and every commonly used character in hiragana has a corresponding charterer in katakana. Some of them look very similar so you can tell they are the same others not so much.

Katakana are mostly used to write down foreign words and loan words.

Kanji is the writing system imported from China.

While the Hiragana and katakana only have a few dozen characters each. Kanji has thousands of characters.

Kanji mostly represents meaning rather than sound. And the same Kanji character can have multiple different readings.

In normal writing much is written in Kanji with hiragana interspersed to represent syllables necessary to represent grammar and relationship between words. Foreign loan words where they appear are written in Katakana and in rare cases some foreign words in Latin alphabet are thrown in for good measure.