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Usage of Japanese Scripts

• There are 3 Japanese scripts : Hiragana, Katakana & Kanji. Mostof the Japanese sentences are written in Hiragana, Katakana & Kanji, all three.
• Hiragana is used for the endings of verbs and for grammatical particles.
• Katakanais used for transcription of words borrowed from foreign languages(except Chinese), like country names, personal names, etc.
• Both Hiragana and Katakana letters are a phonetic reperesentation of sound representing exactly the same set of sounds.
• Kanji, which is a set of Chinese characters called sinograms, is used for the nouns and the radicals of verbs.
• The Hiragana script has a Kanji equivalent (excepts the endings of verbs and the particles).
• The Katakana script does not have a Kanji equivalent.
• Whereas Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic representations of sound, Kanji conveys sounds as well as meanings.
• A sentence in Japanese can be written in Hiragana and Katakana only (without Kanji).
• Romaji (Roman letters) is simply the transliteration of  Japanese in the Latin script. It is sometimes used for the convenience of foreigners, mostly on sign-boards and at stations.
• The Romaji vowelsā, ī, ū, ē signify emphasis, and hence are also written asaa, ii, uu et ee. ex. īe = iie
• The vowel ō becomes ou and not oo ex. gakkō = gakkou
• In Katakana, the emphasis on the vowel signifies a long sound written as ー. ex. nōto (notebook), will be written in katakana as : ノート

Example. The sentence 'Karina has a stomachache.' is written in :

Japanese Romaji :Karina san wa onaka ga itai desu.  ;

Japanese traditional (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji) : カリナさんはお腹が痛いです。 ; where
Kanji = 腹 (na), 痛(ita) ; Katakana = カリナ(Karina) and the rest is Hiragana.

Japanese Hiragana and Katakana (without Kanji) : カリナさんはおなかがいたいです。
Note - The Kanjis in the sentence written in Japanese traditional, 腹 and 痛are replaced by their hiragana equivalents おな and いた respectively.

Note :
'San' is used as a suffix to a personal name and is the equivalent of Mr, Mrs, Miss and Master.
は (ha) is read (wa) only when it is used as the particle attached to the noun or the subject of a sentence.
は(wa) is always used after the subject.
In the example above, は(wa) comes after the subject depāto カリナさん (Karina san) .

Kanji is sometimes written in combination with Hiragana.
In the above example onaka (stomach) is written in Kanji as お腹が, and in Hiragana as おなか
likewise, itai (pain) is written in Kanji as 痛い, and in Hiragana asいたい.

Romaji Vocabulary  Hiragana Vocabulary   Katakana Vocabulary  Kanji Vocabulary  

Hiragana Alphabets   Katakana Alphabets   Kanji Characters Tables