As an English speaking person who recently got into learning Japanese, I was intrigued by the use of the three writing systems: Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, however I could not truly understand why it is that way. I do know a bit about the history of these languages but that is not what I am interested in knowing; I wish to know what purpose these three separate systems serve in these current times to justify their existence of used simultaneously as compared to other languages having a singular writing system.

I tried to research a bit about this topic, but I couldn’t get a satisfactory answer. I thought Hiragana was supposed to be used for native words and Katakana for foreign words, but this assumption didn’t quite fit what I saw while reading manga or watching anime. I once saw someone say how Kanji was incredibly essential to the Japanese language, but I couldn’t grasp the reason, considering how these Kanji characters were seen with their hiragana pronunciation as a side-note, I knew it wasn’t worth just thinking about the explanations by myself, thus I thought of the idea of this post.

I wish to learn about the use of these writing systems from the perspective of a person who knows both Japanese and English well, is aware of how these systems are used in practical daily life and understands the trouble of someone brought up in an English medium, unable to grasp the significance of this system. This is my genuine curiosity and I do not mean to belittle the use of this system in any way.

  • @[email protected]
    7•1 year ago

    These three systems basically formed a Voltron of language if you will. Hiragana is commonly used to make up most of the sentence structure, katakana is commonly used for foreign words, and Kanji is most commonly used for nouns.

    With their powers combined they make up sentences. As for the why, it largely has to do with tradition and history. Korean has shifted to a more easy to read/understand writing system, but in Japan it is much harder to do something like read a newspaper. Why? Because you either know the Kanji or you don’t. There is no sounding it out.

    There are lots of exceptions to when to use certain writing systems. For example, sushi can be written like 送信, すし, or スシ in advertisements. I asked a Japanese friend about it and he basically said it just depends.