It is so interesting to learn Japanese. The tones of the language are very different, and the politeness of the Japanese people comes through well in their language, which is both elegant and respectful.
Japanese writing is also very elegant. It started out as a Chinese script and has changed over time to become something that is uniquely Japanese. There are different ways to write Japanese characters, which can be confusing for people who don't know much about Japanese culture or for students of Japanese culture who haven't looked into the details of the Japanese written language yet.
There are three ways to write Japanese characters: Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Sometimes, a fourth way called Romaji is used.
Kanji
The Chinese word hanzi, which means "Han characters," is where the word kanji comes from. The word "Han" comes from the Han Dynasty and is also how the Chinese call themselves.
To use Kanji, you would have to use between 5000 and 10000 Chinese characters. This meant that it was hard to write in this form. In 1981, the Japanese government made the j?y? kanji hy?, or List of Chinese Characters for General Use, to make it easier to write and read Japanese. On the list, there are 1945 regular characters and 166 special characters that can only be used to write names. This is the only form that can be used in official documents, newspapers, textbooks, and other types of writing.
Hiragana
People think that the syllables of Hiragana come from Chinese characters. Hiragana, which means "ordinary syllabic script," was once called "women's hand" or "onnade" because women were the ones who used it the most. Men often use Kanji and Katakana to write. But the way Hiragana was used changed over time. By the 10th century, both men and women were using it.
In the first versions of hiragana, different characters for the same syllable were used. But the whole system was made easier to use by making the written and spoken syllables match each other exactly.
Katakana
The Katakana "alphabets" have been around for a very long time. It came from the short forms of Chinese characters that Buddhist monks used. Back in the 9th century, they used Katakana to show how to say Chinese characters correctly. At first, there were so many different symbols for just one syllable that it was hard to keep track. But over time, it got easier to use. At first, Katakana was thought of as "men's writing," but over the years, it has been used to write sounds, foreign names, telegrams, and loan words from languages other than Chinese. Katakana contains about 48 syllables.
The Japanese language also uses a writing system called Romaji. It is mostly used to turn the Latin alphabet into Japanese characters, especially for words that are written in English or the Latin alphabet but don't have a direct Japanese translation.
