The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:
- Kanji , ideographs from Chinese characters,
- Hiragana , a set of symbols (syllabary) that approximate syllables that make up words, and
- Katakana , another syllabary used for foreign borrowings and other sounds.
To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses the Latin alphabet—examples include abbreviations such as "CD" and "DVD"—and occasionally hentaigana.
Romanized Japanese, called rōmaji , is frequently used by foreign students of Japanese, who have not yet mastered the three main scripts, and by native speakers for computer input.
Here is an example of a newspaper headline (from the Asahi Shimbun on 19 April 2004 ) that uses all four scripts: ( kanji (red) , hiragana (blue) , katakana (green) , and Latin Alphabet and Arabic numerals (black)):
The same headline, transliterated to the Latin alphabet:
The same headline, translated to English:
Here are some examples of words written in Japanese:
Collation (word ordering) in Japanese is based on the kana, which express the pronunciation of the words, rather than the kanji. The kana may be ordered using two common orderings, the prevalent gojūon (fifty-sound) ordering, or the old-fashioned iroha ordering. Kanji dictionaries are collated using the radical system.
Japanese writing
Kanji
Kana
- Hiragana
- Katakana
- Hentaigana
- Man'yōgana
Uses
Rōmaji
- Furigana
- Okurigana
Usage of scripts
Most simple Japanese sentences (like "the cat sat on the mat") will have both kanji and hiragana in them. Kanji is used for nouns (words like "cat" or "mat") and the stems of verbs (words like "sat"), and hiragana for the endings of verbs and for grammatical particles (small, common words such as the Japanese equivalents to the English "on" and "to"). Non-Japanese words or new loan words (except those absorbed into the language long ago or those with original kanji expression) are spelled in katakana .
Kanji ( 漢字 ) are used for:
- nouns
- stems of adjectives and verbs
- Japanese names.
Hiragana ( 平仮名 ) are used to write:
- inflectional endings for adjectives and verbs (okurigana 送り仮名 )
- grammatical particles ( joshi 助詞 )
- Japanese words that have no kanji , where the kanji are difficult to read, where the kanji is not known, or where the reader is unlikely to know them.
- indications of how to read kanji (furigana 振り仮名 ). Furigana serves as a phonetic guide to children and foreign learners. It is used in cases where the reading is non-standard or rare, or if the author wishes to render the exact pronunciation where multiple readings are possible.
Katakana ( 片仮名 ) are used to write:
- foreign words and names
- commonly used animals, plants or objects whose kanji are uncommonly used, such as " tokage " (lizard), " bara " (rose), " rōsoku " (candle)
- onomatopoeia
- emphasized words, much like italicized words in English text
- technical and scientific words, such as plant, animal, and mineral names.
Latin alphabet ( ローマ字 ) are used to write:
For more details on this topic, see rōmaji.
- acronyms and initialisms, for example NATO
- Japanese names or other words intended for use outside of Japan (for example, Japanese names on business cards, in passports, etc.)
- company names, brand names or product names, etc. used both inside and outside of Japan
- foreign words and phrases that appear in an otherwise Japanese context, such as words that appear in advertising, on consumer goods intended for Japanese consumption, etc.
However, there are many exceptions to the above rules. For example, Japanese names may be written in kanji , hiragana or katakana .
In addition, Arabic numerals are commonly used to write numbers in horizontal text.
Choice
Japanese mainly use hiragana or kanji, while katakana is used to translate a foreign word to Japanese characters. The choice of which type of writing to use depends on a number of factors, including standard conventions, readability, and stylistic choices.
Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the specific usage of the word — for instance, the word " naosu " (to fix, or to cure) is written 治す when it refers to curing a person, and 直す when it refers to fixing an object.
Direction of writing
Main article: Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scriptsTraditionally, Japanese is written in a format called tategaki . In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom, with columns ordered from right to left. After reaching the bottom of each column, the reader continues at the top of the column to the left of the current one. This copies the column order of Chinese.
Modern Japanese also uses another writing format, called yokogaki . This writing format is horizontal and reads from left to right.
Early writing system
The current Japanese writing system can be traced back to the 4th century AD, when the written Chinese language was introduced to Japan. No definitive evidence of any native Japanese writing system that predates the introduction of Chinese is known to exist.
Although several kinds of supposedly earlier writing called jindai moji (also kamiyo moji , 神代文字 , lit. "writing of the gods' age") have been found in modern times, some vaguely pictographic, some runic in appearance, and some very close to Korean Hangul, these are now considered hoaxes promoting Japanese nationalism that were perpetrated in the 1930s. Examples can be found on the Internet.
Initially, Chinese characters were not used for writing Japanese; to be literate meant the ability to read and write Classical Chinese. Eventually a system called kanbun ( 漢文 ) was developed, which used both Chinese characters (kanji) and something very similar to Chinese grammar, but often with diacritic marks placed alongside the Chinese text to give hints as to the Japanese equivalent. The earliest written history of Japan, the Kojiki ( 古事記 ), believed to have been compiled sometime before 712, was written in kanbun. Even today all Japanese high schools and some junior high schools teach kanbun as part of their Japanese language curriculum.
There was still no system for rendering Japanese in written form until the development of man'yōgana ( 万葉仮名 ), which used Chinese characters for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese readings) rather than their semantic value. Man'yōgana was initially used to record poetry, as in the Man'yōshū ( 万葉集 ), which was compiled sometime before 759, and from which the writing system derives its name. Hiragana and katakana were both outgrowths from man'yōgana .
Due to the large number of words and concepts entering Japan from China which had no native equivalent, many words entered Japanese directly, with a pronunciation similar to the original Chinese. This Chinese-derived reading is known as on-yomi ( 音読み ), and this vocabulary as a whole is referred to as Sino-Japanese in English and kango 漢語 in Japanese. At the same time, native Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji. Authors increasingly used kanji to represent these words. This Japanese-derived reading is known as ...
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