I don't Understand the Japanese Writing System!!??!?

Question

1. What is writing system is "most" Used :
Katakana Hiragana or Kanji (I KNOW THEY USE ALL THREE)?which do they you "MOST"

2.What really is Kanji, is it a fancy style writing?

Iv'e been using this as a tutor

http://members.aol.com/writejapan/

Until my friend gave me this and now im MORE confused @_@??

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r55/Mabuikoneko/hiragana.jpg

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r55/Mabuikoneko/katakana.jpg



3. Do they really put them together sometime >< ??

Keep in Mind im only 14yrs old ^^"

And

Would it be better if i also take Chinese in my high school since there's no japanese?

Answer 1

Little children use only hiragana. Adults use all three.
They are mixed in a sentence.

Very generally speaking, nouns and the 'stem' of verbs are written with kanji while Japanese equivalent of prepositions are almost always in hiragana, as wall as conjugated part of verbs. Katakana is used mostly for representing the pronunciation of foreign words.

For example, if you want to write "Bon Jovi played in Tokyo in 1993",
Bon Jovi would be Katakana, ED in played and the two in's would be Hiragana, play and Tokyo would be in Kanji and 1993 would be the same, in arabic numerals.

Answer 2

I have at least been through a beginning Japanese course - I'm sure others could be more specific, but here is what I do know.

All three types of writing are used together, depending on the type of writing that is needed. After enough practice you will be able to tell the difference at a glance - it just seems confusing while you are learning the difference in the first place.

Hiragana is typically used for grammar and sentence structure. It can also be used if a name is Japanese in origin. I have seen it used as a preface to more complicated kanji in textbooks, so it may be a shorthand or a simple form for those that are not well versed in kanji.

Katakana is used when a word or name is translated from another language. When you get into how each character is spoken, katakana is always based on the sound of the word that is being translated.

Kanji is the predominant type and the most complicated. It is used to express basic forms of speech such as nouns or adjectives. They are often building blocks; you will find that kanji that focus on a similar subject (a person, or things relating to a person) will carry similar markings. This is supposed to give you clues to the meaning of the character. Because there are so many different words to express in this manner there is a massive number of different symbols - learning these is considered the most difficult part of Japanese both to native speakers and those learning it outside of Japan.

Answer 3

1. Neither one of them is used "more" so than the others in the adult world. (Granted, working in a computer profession you're probably more likely to be dealing with katakana than kanji compared to someone working with newspapers, but I digress.) Adults are expected to read, write, and use all three in their day-to-day lives just like you and I are expected to use lower case letters, capitalized letters, and spaces in our daily lives. Kanji, hiragana, and katakana all appear all over Japanese stores, bathrooms, products, homework, etc. and so forth.

2. Kanji is a faster, much easier way of reading Japanese. It's imported characters from the Chinese writing system and is one (or sometimes two, very rarely more) symbols which mean one single word. Instead of reading some awkwardly long sentence like "わたしのなまえはかすがです" kanji makes everyone's lives so much easier by shortening the sentence (and allowing to to be read with more ease since the Japanese do not use spaces) into 私の名前は春日です (My name is Kasuga).

3. I don't see why you're confused. All your friend gave you is all of the hiragana and all of the katakana, respectively, all at once. If the website you go to doesn't cover those things, it's really your own fault for trying to rely on a website to learn a language.

4. They don't just put them together "some" of the time; they put them together all of the time. Kanji is to make reading easier, quicker, and more precise. Hiragana is for the "Japanese" parts of the sentence that need to be included for proper grammar (or if you don't know a kanji). Katakana is for foreign words (which the Japanese use a *lot*).

Edit: I don't see what age has to do with anything.
Also, if your high school doesn't offer Japanese than take a language it does offer. If it's Chinese, then do Chinese. Because, to be blunt, you can *not* learn a language online.

Answer 4

You must think of hiragana and katakana as alphabets such as ours. Each character has no meaning by itself, but when combined they make words. They are just pheonetic letters. Katakana is only used in foreign words, and at no other time. hiragana is used for Japanese words.
Kanji on the other hand are words in and of themselves. And in turn all kanji can be spelled out with hiragana.
So to answer your question, it's impossible to say which one is used the most because they are all required in specific situations. Good luck with your studies!

Answer 5

ok, the basic japanese writing system is hiragana. you can write anything and everything in japanese with just hiragana.

for foreign words, onomotopea and sounds that don't appear in the japanese language, they use katakana. katakana is the same as hiragana in pronunciation, alphabet, and meaning; it's just written differently. kinda stupid.

kanji are chinese characters. even though japanese has it's own perfectly good alphabet, they use kanji in place of hiragana in most cases. for example, the word for "japanese" is nihongo. 4 hiragana letters: ni-ho-n-go. this can also be written in kanji. every kanji usually has several pronunciations and one or two meanings. it's use is determined both by its meaning and either its japanese sound or its chinese sound. you use 3 kanji to write nihongo: ni-hon-go, ni meaning day or sun, hon meaning book or origin, and go meaning word or language. so, "nihongo" also means sun-origin-language, or the language of the origin of the sun, which is Japan.

Confusing, i know. they say kanji makes things easier, but in reality it makes like about a million times more difficult. bah.

Answer 6

From what I remember, kanji is the original Chinese characters. Each character stands for a single word (unless they are combined to form new words). Hiragana is the phonic alphabet that is used to actually spell out words.

Normally, a newspaper will be 45 percent kanji, 45 percent hiragana, and the rest is a third alphabet (Katakana) that is used to spell out foreign words.

----------------------------edit---------------
I'm not sure if taking Mandarin will make you familiar with the Chinese characters, since Mainland (Communist) China has changed their writing system by simplifying many of the characters. Japan still uses traditional Chinese characters for Kanji.

Answer 7

The way I understand it (wife is Japanese, lived in Japan for several years) is Kanji is more traditional system that comes from china and and each symbol can mean whole words or even combinations of words. Hiragana and Katagana is sort of like thier alphabet which is phonetic. Each Hiragana and Katagana has symbols for the same sounding item. hiragana is used for Japanese specific stuff, whereas Katagana is used for foriegn stuff. For example, sushi, Japanese names, etc... would be written in hiragana, and stuff like Mr. Smith, Ford, or other non-japanese stuff would be written in katagana.

Answer 8

nice