Learning How to Write Japanese

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One potentially overwhelming, but fascinating aspect of Japanese is learning how to write Japanese. For a native English speaker whose only experience is with the 26 letter alphabet, Japanese writing appears totally cryptic. While it is true that Japanese is a totally different system, with practice and commitment, it can be mastered over time.

One of the first things that you will find in learning how to write Japanese is that there are multiple sets of characters. Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji are the three "alphabets", or character sets, that the Japanese language has. Hiragana and Katakana, collectively known simply as Kana, consist of 46 characters each and Kanji consists of literally thousands, approximately 2000 of which are in common usage. Those numbers may make it sound impossible to learn written Japanese, but if you master the kana, you can write and communicate in Japanese just fine.

The two character sets that comprise the kana are 46 characters each and they each represent a single syllable. The Hiragana symbols are used for native Japanese words and are single syllable sounds such as 'ka' or 'so'. Hiragana characters can be used to express a word that might otherwise be written with a single Kanji symbol. Katakana is used for borrowed words, foreign words that don’t exist in Japanese, or non-Japanese names and brands such as ‘Michael’ or ‘McDonalds’. Each symbol in Hiragana has an equivalent in Katakana - i.e. there is a symbol for ‘ka’ in both kana sets. The way to tell the two kana sets apart is that Katakana is very angular and Hiragana is much more cured in style. Knowing that will make things easier when figuring out how to write Japanese.

Eventually, in order to really know how to write Japanese and especially to read it, you will have to learn some of the Kanji characters. Japanese Kanji characters were adapted from Chinese writing thousands of years ago. There are thousands (most estimates are over 5000) of Kanji, but the Japanese government has created a list of just under 2000 that are considered the essential Kanji characters. A person would need to know that list to fully read the newspaper, for instance. Obviously that is still a big list of symbols to learn, but the average Japanese student doesn't know them all until graduation.

Fortunately, if you don't know the Kanji symbol for a particular word, you can spell it out with Kana and a Japanese speaker could comprehend it with little or no trouble. Also when you are first learning and do not know how to write Japanese at all, there is another system called Romaji. Romaji is the ‘Romanization’ of Japanese, or writing it out with the standard 26 letter Latin alphabet. Native Japanese students are now taught Romaji as well as traditional Japanese. An example of Romaji would be writing out the Japanese word for hello as 'konichiwa'. Since most people learn to speak Japanese before reading and writing it, Romaji is a great help to the learning process. With some practice and repetition it is not too difficult to learn, and many people find that learning written Japanese can be more interesting and enjoyable than speaking it.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Visit Japanese Language Now for a collection of resources and tips on how to learn Japanese Kanji.

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