What is the Difference between these to "A"(ah) in Japanese???

Question

Ok in Japanese these two characters "A"(ah) is spelled two different ways. I know already about Hiragana and Katakana but in both writing system there's two ways to write "A"(ah)

Example:

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

1. In the Hiragana section what is the difference between the 1st
"A" and 2nd "A"?

2. Why is there two of them?

3. Which is commonly used or is both of them commonly used?

4. If I learn Chinese Kanji would it make it easier for me to learn
Japanese writing?

I know the Difference between hiragana and katakana.

I just want to know the difference between the two "A" in the hiragana or Katakana

Answer 1

あ　安
ア　阿

Japanese hiragana and katakana were both derived from Chinese characters (kanji). Originally all Japanese was written in Chinese. They then decided to use Chinese characters to approximate the sound of japanese words. That is they used 安 as the sound "a" (although the sound is now pronounced "an")instead of the meaning "safe". English letters began the same way. If they wrote 安 quickly it became あ. Hiragana was essentially short-hand for Chinese characters. Katakana was similar only instead of simply being written quickly, they just took a piece of the character, stylized it, and used it for the sound.
When Katakana and Hiragana were created, they weren't used in the way that they are today. Things were written solely in hiragana or katakana or in chinese. As the language progressed they began to combine them to get the mixture you have today.

Nobody uses kanji phonetically the way they did when they created hiragana, so you don't really need to know how they were derived unless you're studying Classical Japanese.
*note, Chinese characters as used in Japanese are different than characters used in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Hong Kong and Taiwan and most US textbooks use the traditional writing of the character, Japan simplified some of their characters slightly to make them easier to write, Mainland China, simlified many of their characters even further and can be unrecognizable. Anything written in Japan before 1945 and China before 1949 would also use traditional characters)
Hope this helps

Answer 2

あ - this is hiragana.

ア - this is katakana

Both are pronounced the same (ah). Japanese has three writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana can represent any Japanese word or sound, but is often used for particles and conjugations. Katakana is used to represent foreign words, like American names.

Your chart is explaining how the Japanese came up with the characters for "a" in hiragana and katakana. Here is a complete list of the hiragana and katakana with the kanji that they were simplified from:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_hiragana.htm
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_katakana.htm

Both are commonly used. In fact, Japanese is written with a combination of hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

In order to read/write Japanese properly, you will have to learn kanji. You should start however, by learning hiragana and katakana. Knowing kanji will not help you with hiragana or katakana, and it takes longer. Hiragana and katakana are actually very easy to learn. You can learn hiragana and katakana from the websites I've listed.

Answer 3

The second form is no longer used, I believe.

And Chinese kanji may mean the same thing in some circumstances, but it'd be pronounced differently. You're better off trying to memorize the Japanese version. What tens to help a little are mneumonics, although they might be a little strange. ;)

Answer 4

*drops a-bomb on Hiroshima*