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What is the most commonly used type of Japanese language used there? Is it kanji?

2007-02-12 13:12:18 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture Languages

4 answers

technically, all Japanese could be written soley in hiragana. And this is the writing foreigners and Japanese alike learn first. As one's knowledge of kanji progresses, more kanji can be substituted into sentences. Believe it or not, this actually makes reading easier. Kanji can only represent nouns and the base words of verbs however. Chinese doesn't have a past tense and Japanese does so Chinese characters (kanji) don't suffice. Hiragana is used for the conjigations (-ed, -ing etc) and many adverbs as well. Katakana is mainly used for borrowed words (English words are fashionable, but they're written in their syllabary to make them easier to read and pronounce). Katakana can also be used for emphasis or specific species instead of using the unique character(s) assigned to it. The more formal the text, the more kanji they will use. (i.e. a newspaper or government announcement will use more kanji words than a novel or a magazine or comic book)

2007-02-12 14:21:33 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1 0

Katakana is used for phrases like English phrases, phrases that don't seem to be Japanese. Hiragana is nearly Japanese phrases however simplified and less difficult to learn. A combo of Kanji and Hiragana is often used. I could must say the simplest approach to begin off is through studying Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji may be very rough. It is the identical factor as Chinese characters (in which it derived from). Hiragana can spell out kanji phrases too . Little children in Japan use each Katakana and hiragana and finally must memorize kanji.

2016-09-05 07:55:05 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

The Japanese use a mix of kanji, hiragana, katakana, and romanization. The latter two are used more for foreign borrowings and 'pseudo-English'. Kanji are borrowed from China, but they are useful in differentiating the many homophones that exist in Japanese. Kanji alone will not suffice, however, because unlike Chinese, Japanese is inflected. Thus, hiragana is necessary to show grammatical functions.

2007-02-12 13:40:29 · answer #3 · answered by paladin 3 · 0 1

Check out the info about Japanese on Wikipedia. It might not be all accurate, but at least you can get a basic idea.

2007-02-14 20:46:54 · answer #4 · answered by Cindy M 2 · 0 0

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