THE difference between?

Question

he difference between hiragana, katakana, and kanji

Answer 1

Isnt it obvious? It is kinjaghrange!

Answer 2

Ferencz E is right! I live here, so I see them all every day!

Katakana (カタカナ) = normally used for 'borrowed' words, like 'soccer' (サッカー)

Hiragana (ひらがな) = used for 'particles' (similar to 'the', 'of', 'is', etc.) and for Japanese words that either CAN'T be written in kanji, or that the person doesn't WANT to write in kanji (either because he / she doesn't know the right kanji, or because the target audience probably wouldn't know it!) It's also used to add a pronunciation guide over the top of kanji.

Kanji (漢字) = characters based on Chinese characters, some are the same as the Chinese characters still, and others have changed their appearance or meaning.

This site
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese.htm
has links to pages on all three, and you might find that more informative than any answers you might get here!
; ) (Including this one!)

If you can't see the characters - I'll assume you have a Windows computer - Microsoft have free downloads of the package you need to be able to see Japanese on your PC.

Answer 3

♡You've got some great answers already so I'll just give you another Hiragana and Katakana chart to look at too:♡
http://www.harapan.co.jp/english/japan/hiragana.htm
☆The links at the bottom of this↑ page are very useful!
Read about the functions of Kanji here:
http://www.kanji.org/kanji/japanese/writing/outline.htm#3.2

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Kanji are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), arabic numerals, and the Roman alphabet.
Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each symbol represents one mora. Each kana is either a vowel (such as a あ); a consonant followed by a vowel (such as ka か); or n ん, a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n, or ng (IPA ŋ), or like the nasal vowels of French.
The word katakana means "side kana," as it is derived from the system of grammatical annotations to Japanese works in Chinese called "kambun" (漢文).　These kana were written beside the Chinese characters and helped determine the meaning of phrases as if they were Japanese.
Katakana are characterized by short straight strokes and angular corners, and are the simplest of the Japanese scripts.

Answer 5

the difference between hiragana, katakana and kanji is that hiragana is used to write some japanese words and to finish some kanjis.

for example:

食べる, which means to eat (taberu)

this word is composed of both the kanji 食(ta) and the hiragana べ(be) and る(ru), but without the hiragana at the end this kanji does not mean anything since "ta" is not really a word. Some kanjis also have different ways to be read.

for example:

食 is sometimes pronounced as "ta" and sometimes pronounced as "shoku" and the way to pronounce it depends on how it is used.

for example when you combine 事 (ji), which means event and 食(shoku), the compound (the combination of two or more kanjis) shokuji is formed and it means meal. As you can see no hiragana is used for this and this is because the 食 and the 事 kanjis by themselves are pronounced as "shoku" and "ji".

katakana however are characters used for words that are used in the Japanese language, but are of foreign origin.

for example gum in english is ゴム in japanese. ゴ which is pronounced as "go" and ム, whcih is pronounced as "mu" are put together to form the word ゴム, which is pronounced as gomu.

There are also some words in the Japanese language that have no kanji and are of Japanese origin, and thus they are written in hiragana.

for example:

ありがとう
あ-a
り-ri
が-ga
と-to
う-u

all these hiragana are put together, to make the word "arigatoo"(sometimes the う[u] is pronounced as o), which means thank you.

good luck.

Answer 6

They're three separate alphabets (well, Kanji are technically pictographs), of the four taught in Japan.

Hiragana: used in words of Japanese derivation

Katakana: used in words of foreign derivation(often Chinese, but also European, such as 'pan' for bread)

Kanji: what we call "Chinese Characters"

The fourth is Romaji: Western script (ie. 'our' alphabet), used extensively in advertising