Please help. I'm trying to settle a dispute with a collegue of mine. I could just look it up, but this is way more fun! LOL!
2006-07-06 14:41:00 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Kanji are the oldest, as they are basically Chinese characters. The Hiragana and katakana arose simultaneously in about 8 BCE, the hiragana chiefly to enable women (who were not supposed to study Chinese) to use a written system of phonemes, and the katakana to facilitate phonetic representation of the pronunciation of chinese words. It remains amazing to me that the Japanese were able to take three different systems, mix them up to use together, and it's STILL simpler than Mandarin or Cantonese!
Perhaps this link will help settle the bet...
2006-07-06 14:59:02 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 5⤊ 2⤋
Actually the Katakana and Hiragana were derived from the Kanji and as time passed the Hiragana and Katakana evolved independently from the kanji so they changed in appearance, but still you can tell which Hiragana and which Katakana was derived from which Kanji characters.
And thus the Kanji came first.
good luck.
2006-07-07 04:12:43 · answer #2 · answered by john 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The first writing system was Kanzi (the Chinese characters).
However, while Chinese characters work well for Chinese, Japanese grammar is inflected and needed phonetic alphabets for the grammar. (Remember kanzi is sound tied to meaning
while a phonetic alphabet is just sound).
Surprisingly katakana came before hiragana. It is surprising because hiragana has become the phonetic alphabet used for the grammar today, so one would assume it came first, especially since katakana has become the phonetic alphabet which is used mainly for foreign words at present.
Nevertheless the first phonetic alphabet was put together by Japanese women, and it was katakana. Hey ho, ladies!
2006-07-08 13:42:55 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
And I thought learning the Cyrillic alphabet was frustrating!
Arrrrrgggghhh!!!
(Just Kidding)
I don't have an answer to your question, but that won't keep me from babbling thoughts that entertain me.
I found it interesting, I am a docent at a classical Chinese garden, one tour I did was for an Asian Studies class, a student had a Japanese dictionary, and he was able to recognize and look up some of the characters, and the definitions agreed. He couldn't really read them, it was his first term of study.
It seems to me that the written language and the spoken are actually two different languages, and I've tried to ask that of Chinese volunteers. They say no, but I'm not sure they understand what I am asking. Maybe it can't make sense to them either. I am so accustomed to an alphabet,a phonetic approximation, and they have a different mental construct.
And how do Asians ever remember what word goes with what character? The alphabetic spelling helps me remember the words, even if English pronounciation is inconsistent with spelling.
2006-07-07 05:47:42 · answer #4 · answered by Triple M 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Kanji came first. Hiragana and Katakana were later additions in order to write Japanese inflectional and conjugational information
2006-07-06 23:53:42 · answer #5 · answered by Taivo 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's true! Kanji came first - from China, then hiragana and katakana evolved from kanji. And it really IS possible to tell which kanji they were taken from!
; )
2006-07-07 05:21:31 · answer #6 · answered by _ 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
My Japanese friend tells me that Kanji came first and then after this came Hiragana and Katakana. :)
2006-07-06 21:50:04 · answer #7 · answered by The Fox 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It would help if you told us what y'alls talking about for us to help.
2006-07-06 21:44:22 · answer #8 · answered by Mrs. Mommy 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋