When langventuring, it is important to stay objective, enter a new language and especially present it to others with no bias whatsoever. But Japanese is really special to me since it is the language of my childhood. No, I didn't have any Japanese relatives or friends —I had TV. And Candy.
The Japanese language came into my life at early age thanks to the classic anime series "Candy Candy". So, already as a 6-year-old, I could perfectly sing at least 2 songs in Japanese with all the passion of my heart (not so sure about getting all the words right, though) —the opening and the closing ones of that series. I also knew what "Watashi wa Candy" would mean, thus I knew how to introduce myself in Japanese. Not bad, huh?
Let this experience touch your heart for 1 minute and 11 seconds, too. Here is the opening song for "Candy Candy", and while you are absolutely enjoying it, check out all these letters that appear on the screen. This is one of the most curious traits of the Japanese language, and it is also the subject of this Episode.
You see, the question "How many letters are there in Japanese alphabet?" can't be simply answered with one number, because it doesn't have just one alphabet... But, before we get into the details, treat yourself to the authentic experience first-hand by watching this video:
Although there is a lot to be said about Japanese sounds and grammar, I think the most spectacular thing about this language is its characters. You can't see how wild it is unless you are familiar with the fact that at any given sentence there are 3 writing systems, 3 alphabets being used. Yes, three! Whatever gave them that idea.
The most logical question after you discover such a thing is, "Can I still get by with just one?" And the answer to that would be a categorical and firm "No". No, you can't. You gotta know all 3 of them, no exception, if you want to read words and texts in Japanese.
Ok, maybe the most logical question here is actually, "Why might a language need three writing systems?" To answer that one, let's first meet the "troublemakers", i.e. the Japanese scripts (go ahead, click on their names below and you will see what each script looks like). Try to get past the odd names —it is what it is.
For hiragana and katakana, I personally found the tables on this page very useful: Linguanaut; for kanji this one: Jisho.
So, we've got hiragana —THE Japanese characters (although derived from Chinese ones), katakana —still Japanese but simplified, based on hiragana, and kanji —totally and utterly Chinese.
In a sentence they look something like that:
Now to the why. Until the fourth century Japanese had no written form and the introduction of written Chinese provided an early model. The use of Chinese characters to represent Japanese words or syllables is known as kanji. But the sounds of the Chinese language and the Japanese language are completely different. Despite this, Japan went ahead and adopted the Chinese readings for the kanji too.
Instead of converting the Japanese language into Chinese, they decided each kanji will have a Chinese way of reading it and a Japanese way of reading it. These two readings are what we know as on'yomi (or simply on) and kun'yomi (or simply kun) readings.
- On'yomi 音読み: Readings derived from the Chinese pronunciations.
- Kun'yomi 訓読み: The original, indigenous Japanese readings.
Since kanji does not represent various markers for tenses and prepositions required by Japanese, hiragana markers often accompany them, fulfilling this purpose, and they may also indicate the pronunciation of kanji. Note that hiragana symbols were derived from the kanji symbols.
Hiragana symbols are written in a cursive, somewhat rounded script that was known at the end of the first millennium as onna-de, or woman’s script. Its function is primarily grammatical and hiragana symbols frequently accompany and modify kanji symbols. But hiragana is only one of the representetives of kana scripts. The other one is called katakana. Katakana symbols tend to be more angular in style and are used for foreign words, for children’s books, or for large public notices. As history has it, katakana was created by Tibetian monks.
So, both types of kana were based on Chinese characters and then simplified to represent sounds. They both represent exactly the same set of sounds, and you can write every Japanese word using hiragana or katakana. But katakana nowadays is mostly used to write foreign words where foreign sounds are replaced with appropriately sounding katakana symbols (well, as close as it can be done): ウォッ (wokka) — vodka.
Another script used in the Japanese language worth mentioning is romaji. It is a way to write Japanese words using the Latin alphabet. Obviously, if you see Japanese characters for the first time, you can't really read it, pronounce it right. Romaji helps those who know Latin alphabet with that. Like in the example above, the word wokka in romaji for ウォッ(bunch of symbols you don't know how to pronounce).
Same logic may apply to katakana: the way romaji serves you and I to read weird Japanese characters, katakana helps the Japanese to read weird Latin symbols!
Overall, there are 46 Hiragana symbols, 46 Katakana symbols and thousands of Kanji hieroglyphs used in the Japanese language. For 2019, the demanded minimum of kanji symbols at schools hits 2,150 symbols. Just to release pressure, the top 500 most frequent kanji characters account for approximately 80% of total kanji use. Furthermore, the top 1,600 most frequent characters cover 99% of total use. I know, still a lot to memorize.
So, do you have to? Maybe kanji —Chinese symbols intorduced into the Japanese language ages ago— is not that popular in Japan anymore? Just look at this random image of a Japanese street in Tokio and let it speak for itself. Spoiler alert: there is no escaping kanji. Neither hiragana or katakana.
Little tip: when you learn kanji, you can really simplify the process by memorizing first the radicals, a.k.a. the building blocks, all the kanji consist of. With about 200 radicals you can at least guess the meaning, although not the pronunciation, of a kanji glyph. When you learn to write them, pay extra attention to the the strokes order. It may not seem that much of importance at a time, but this effort will definitely pay off along the road and significantly facilitate your future writing skill acquirement.
The top 5 most frecuently used kanji hieroglyphs in Japanese newspapers are (remember, they all have different on and kun readings):
- 日 — sun, day
- 年 — year
- 大 — big
- 人 — person
- 国 — country
As for the differences in frequency of usage between kana and kanji, let me present you this statistics: in Japanese texts, if we take away all punctuation marks (which normally make up to 11% of symbols used) and other symbols leaving only kanji and kana, kana characters will amount to 74.2% and kanji, logically, 25.8%. So, as you can see, kana is used more often than kanji, but still kanji is there every forth symbol. And "inside" kana, hiragana symbols are used 9 times more often than katakana characters.
It is fair to mention that various attempts have been made to rationalize the kana and kanji systems, which pose some problems because of the different mental requirements of the two and because of the sheer number of characters —yeah, it seems as too many of them for the Japanese, too. Although some streamlining has been made, the Japanese people and state have so far resisted wide scale change.
Plus, there are some pretty solid arguments against writing exclusively in one Japanese script—hiragana.
- Because kanji were developed before hiragana, writing with kanji generally imparts a more educated and mature feeling. Sure, you could write a word in hiragana and be understood, but certain words that are traditionally built including kanji will look childish to Japanese readers.
Another point is that Japanese has a very limited number of sounds. Because of this, the Japanese language is filled with words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings called homonyms. As a matter of fact, there are so many of them that without kanji, it can be confusing to tell which one is being written about.
And finally, Japanese writing doesn’t put spaces, at all, between different words. This sounds like it would have the potential to turn every sentence into a confusing mass of compressed language bits, but written Japanese tends to fall into patterns where kanji and hiragana alternate, with the kanji forming base vocabulary and the hiragana giving them grammatical context.
Still, the use of kanji as part of Japanese orthography has been at the center of heated debate since at least the end of the middle of 19th century. The use of kanji has been criticised for various reasons, the main criticisms being:
- There are too many kanji, and it is difficult to remember how to read and write them.
- The Latin alphabet is used internationally, and using kanji separates Japan from the rest of the world. This argument was used from a technical point of view after the appearance of the typewriter and computer.
- Processing kanji is more time consuming on word processors and computers.
- Text that uses a mixture of kanji and kana requires kanji conversion, which is inefficient in comparison to text that only uses kana or romaji.
Hiragana, katakana, kanji, romaji... That is quite a symbol overload for our first meeting with the Japanese language. And yet, we barely scratched the surface. Bear in mind that all these Japanese symbols you see are NOT letters! They are either kanas or hieroglyphs. What's the difference? How do you read them then? More curious mysteries coming up in the next Episode!
またね (Matane!) See you!
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