Let's Learn JAPANESE

Lesson #1 : Japanese Characters

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     What is the difference Hiragana and Katakana?

     - Hiragana is only used for Japanese word, while Katakana is used for foreign languanges such as English. So never use Katakana for a Japanese word. Only use it for foreign words, names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names and sometimes for emphasis.

     What is Kanji?

     - Kanji is a modern Japanese writing system which are adopted by Chinese characters. Hiragana and Katakana characters also originally derive from Chinese characters. Texts without Kanji are rare; most are either children's books-since children tend to know few Kanji at an early age. To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses acronyms from the Latin alphabet, for example in terms such as "BC/AD", "a.m./p.m.", "FBI", and "CD". Romanized Japanese is most frequently used by foreign students of Japanese who have not yet mastered Kana.

     Japanese sentences contain a mixture of Kanji and Katakana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is often considered to be the most complicated in use anywhere in the world.

• KATAKANA •

• HIRAGANA •

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