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when writing japanese is it ok to spell a word using all three ways Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji. For example cat "neko" Hir. "ねこ", Kat."ネコ", Kanji 猫 or can you mitch-match "ねコ" which way would be considered the correct way to right it?

2006-11-16 18:14:44 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Travel Asia Pacific Japan

6 answers

You can write cat in whatever way you like. If you look at this page;
http://allabout.co.jp/pet/cat/
you'll find 猫, and ネコ, but not ねこ.

That's probably because it's for adults, if it was aimed at kids there would be more hiragana than kanji!

It's like the word kamakiri / mantis, most of the time you see it in katakana, but it seems that it IS a Japanese word, and it has 4 different kanji combinations as well as the hiragana. Kamakiri is written in katakana most of the time because the kanji are awkward - because of having 4 different options people would get confused - and hiragana would blend in too well with the hiragana before it and after it. So they use katakana to make it stand out.

One thing you should NEVER do is to mix them! If you wrote ねコ people would assume that the ね was part of the word before, and they wouldn't have a clue what a コ was doing on it's own! It could take a few seconds for someone to figure out what you meant to write..!!

So, use the kanji if you think your target audience will understand it.
Use the hiragana if you think your target audience might not know the correct kanji.
Use katakana if you think hiragana will blend in with the surrounding words, and that your target audience can actually READ katakana..!
If you want to use hiragana, but fear it will blend in, put the word in those strange 'brackets' - 「ねこ」... it will be easy to identify as a separate word that way - they use it all the time on news programmes, when they've got text in one corner of the screen with the basics of the current story..!

2006-11-16 19:17:10 · answer #1 · answered by _ 6 · 4 5

Ami and Hyun are almost correct... Living in Japan has taught me that there are very few rules when it comes to alphabet use. I often see "pasta" written both as ぱすた and パスタ on menus. There's a great TV show on animals here every Sunday and one of the favorite cats is very chubby, so he's called "debuneko." I've seen it spelled デブ猫 and デブネコ...and I'm sure でぶねこ is correct, as well. For your specific question, though, neko in kanji is correct, but might be more easily read by children if written in hiragana. Hope that helps!

2006-11-16 19:07:10 · answer #2 · answered by WonderingWanderer 3 · 3 0

katakana is used for foreign loan words while the kanji and hiragana is used for others. Neko would be spelled out either in kanji or hiragana but it would be improper to use katakana. On the other hand words like pasakon (PC) woud be written in katakana since pasakon come from the English word personal computer.

2006-11-16 18:23:26 · answer #3 · answered by ami.kawabata 3 · 1 2

that's a toughee. If that's digital textual content cloth, replica and paste it into bablefish finding out on the jap to English decision. whether this works, it's going to probably come returned jibberish even with the undeniable fact that it will make bit greater experience. From right here that's a controversy of examining the context and attempting to ensure what this unusual poetry extremely capacity. If that's on paper, attempt the telephone e book for a translation provider or make friends with somebody in Japan and ask them to translate it for you. stable success.

2016-10-04 01:38:29 · answer #4 · answered by ? 4 · 0 0

if you're using a foreign word, use katakana,
when you're using native japanese words, use the hiragana and its equivalent kanji... ^^"

arachi? ^^" kkk...

2006-11-16 18:41:45 · answer #5 · answered by Hyun-Jae Lee 2 · 3 0

Try the Wordreference forums

www.wordreference.com

2006-11-16 18:19:52 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0 1

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