Try the Quiz : COLOURS, DAYS & MONTHS (IRO, YŌBI TO TSUKI)

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Usage of Japanese Scripts

• There are 3 Japanese scripts : Hiragana, Katakana & Kanji. Most of the Japanese sentences are written in Hiragana, Katakana & Kanji, all three.
• Hiragana is used for the endings of verbs and for grammatical particles.
• Katakana is used for transcription of words borrowed from foreign languages (except Chinese), like country names, personal names, etc.
• Both Hiragana and Katakana letters are phonetic representations 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 'The department store is closed on Mondays' is written in :

Japanese Romaji : Depāto wa getsuyōbi ni yasumi desu ;

Japanese traditional (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji) :  デパートは月曜日に休みです。; where
Kanji = 月曜日 (getsuyōbi = Monday),休み (yasumi = holiday) ; Katakana = デパート(depāto = department store) and the rest is Hiragana.

Japanese Hiragana and Katakana (without Kanji) : デパートはげつようびにやすみです。
Note - The Kanjis in the sentence written in Japanese traditional, 月曜日 and 休み are replaced by their hiragana equivalents げつようび (getsuyōbi) andやすみ(yasumi) respectively.

Note :
は (ha) is read (wa) only when it is used as the particle attached to the noun or the subject of a sentence.
In other words, one writes は not わ for the particle wa. 
は(wa) is always used after the subject.
In the example above, は(wa) comes after the subject depāto デパート (department store) .

Kanji is sometimes written in combination with Hiragana.
In the above example yasumi (holiday) is written in  Kanji as 休み and in Hiragana as やすみ. Note the み (mi) in Kanji.

Romaji Vocabulary  Hiragana Vocabulary   Katakana Vocabulary  Kanji Vocabulary  

Hiragana Alphabets   Katakana Alphabets   Kanji Characters Tables