Japanese Alphabet
Hiragana is a phonetic alphabet consisting of 46 characters. Hiragana is used in the Japanese writing system to represent grammar and particles. For example, hiragana would be used to denote that a verb is in the past tense or not and so on. Some nouns are also written using hiragana.
Katakana is also a phonetic alphabet consisting of 46 characters. Katakana is used in the Japanese writing system to represent sounds and words from foreign languages. Additionally, katakana can be used instead of hiragana or katakana to denote stress on a particular word.
Kanji is a character set consisting of thousands of characters. The government has limited the characters to 1,945 kanji for daily use and calls this the “joyo” kanji set. Each kanji character has multiple readings depending on the other kanji it is paired up with or the word it is being used in. Kanji is perhaps the biggest obstacle for foreigners who wish to master Japanese. Kanji is necessary in order to read and write Japanese.
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The Best Way To Learn Japanese Written Language
You may be interested in learning how to read and write Japanese, that is, the three “alphabets” Japanese uses, hiragana, katakana and kanji. So, what is the best way to approach the Japanese written language?
As I said before, three “alphabets” make up Japanese. The first, hiragana, is used mostly for grammar denoting things like past tense or present tense. It is also used for the particles in Japanese. Katakana is often used for sounds and foreign words. Both Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic alphabet systems. Both alphabets have under 100 characters.
Kanji on the other hand is the beast that most Japanese learners have trouble with. In order to become “literate” in Japanese, you need to learn the government recommended 1,945 joyo kanji. Kanji, of course, is not phonetic and you need to learn the multiple readings for each character.
This may sound particularly difficult. Well, it is, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. You most likely do not need to learn all 1,945 kanji and furthermore, you probably don’t have to learn how to write them all. Since everyone uses computers these days, it is most important that you know how to recognize the important characters so that after you type in the Japanese sounds, you can select the correct characters on your screen.
In fact, many young Japanese these days have trouble with kanji themselves and often end up resorting to using their cell phones to look up characters if they happen to forget them and are away from a computer. So, don’t feel bad about kanji yourself.
Now, what is the best way to approach learning the written language of Japanese? First, you should learn hiragana and katakana. As I said before, they are both phonetic alphabets and each have less than 100 characters so they can be learned pretty quickly. Since they are used fairly often in Japanese, the are very important and you will be using them quite a bit.
So the real problem is kanji. In my opinion, the best way to approach the study of kanji is by repeated exposure. If you’re learning Japanese for the long term, you may be interested in a systematic approach like the Heisig method which teaches you kanji by introducing them through their smaller “radical” parts. Nonetheless, I think it’s important that you get repeated exposure to kanji in order to learn them quickly and efficiently.
The whole process of the best way to get repeated exposure is out of the scope of this article but I cover it in depth in my book which you may be interested in taking a look at if you are serious about learning the Japanese language or any foreign language for that matter. Suffice it to say, you should set up some system to review the kanji you come across.
I hope this article gave you some help in your pursuit of the written language in Japanese. If you want the fastest method to learn a language so that you will become fluent in a foreign language in a matter of months, learn thousands of words without worrying about forgetting them, master grammar and do all of this in an enjoyable, painless manner then you need to read Learn That Language Now!