Do you know how many kinds of letters Japanese language has? English has only one, of course, alphabets. The answer to the question is THREE! Japanese people use three kinds of letters in their daily life. When you finish reading this article, you’ll get a bit more knowledge of Japanese!
This article includes:
- What are the 3 kinds of letters of Japanese?
- 1. Kanji
- 2. Katakana
- 3. Hiragana
- Summary
What are the 3 kinds of letters of Japanese?
Maybe you’ve got the answer, but let me introduce the 3 types of letters. In short, the 3 types of letters are:
- kanji（漢字）
- katakana（カタカナ）
- hiragana（ひらがな）
1. kanji（漢字）
First, Japanese use kanji（漢字）. You can see kanji on T-shirts, the name of some shops or many other places around the world. Many of kanji came from Chinese, but the kanji in Japan are sometimes different from Chinese ones. Also, there are some kanji used only in Japan. Each kanji has each meaning(s), so if you learn kanji, you can guess what the word means just seeing the kanji.
2. katakana（カタカナ）
The second one is katakana. Katakana（カタカナ） is a little similar to kanji. Japanese have 50 katakana letters like アイウエオカキクケコ… etc. Japanese has 50 letters for pronunciation and they have 50 katakana and 50 hiragana. Katakana is used for the words which came from foreign countries or onomatopoeic or mimetic words. One big difference between kanji and katakana is that katakana just carries the sound whereas kanji carries meaning(s).
3. hiragana（ひらがな）
As you already know, there are 50 hiragana in Japanese. Hiragana and Katakana have some things in common. The most important thing you should know about hiragana is it just represents the sound just the same as katakana. Also, hiragana can be used for any words. That is one of the biggest differences from katakana.
Summary
Japanese language has 3 kinds of letters; kanji, katakana and hiragana. Kanji can represent meaning(s) but katakana and hiragana can’t.
From next article, I’m going to introduce some details about each of kanji, katakana and hiragana.
