Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji

Hi, everyone! Continuing on from my Nihongo Introduction Post, I’ll discuss with you the basics of hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

For those of you who have no idea what these words mean, basically, these are the three classifications of the characters by which the Japanese alphabet is divided into.

Normally, people start out by learning hiragana and katakana, as these are much simpler than kanji. This is because, with hiragana and katana, you are simply learning how to spell words with a phonetic alphabet (of relating to speech sounds). Thus, hiragana and katakana are your sound/syllable alphabet characters.

However, when it comes to kanji, you cannot simply rely on the syllabic characters to spell out a word. Kanji characters vary in meaning and strongly depend on the context by which the characters are used, which characters are placed beside each other, and much more.

To further explain each character type in detail:

Hiragana

Hiragana are Japanese characters with vocabulary strictly from the Japanese language.

For example (written in romaji = roman letters):

• sushi （すし = su + shi）
• kawaii（かわいい = ka + wa + i + i）
• konnichiwa（こんにちは = ko + n + ni + chi + ha）
• ohayou（おはよう = o + ha + yo + u）

All of these are vocabulary words that came from Japan. Similarly, you can compare it with how you cannot find the Filipino word “mabuhay” in the English dictionary, or, with how you cannot find the Chinese word “xie xie” in the English vocabulary.

I’ve prepared a chart showing all characters under hiragana to familiarize yourself with it, and also, as something that you can use as a study guide in the future:

In order to learn and memorize all the characters under hiragana and katakana, I started out by learning from the video tutorials from tofugu. I honestly found this very effective! Although, the video tutorials for the hiragana alphabet are incomplete, it’s still a good way to start and get used to the practice of the “recall factor” in order to memorize. Later on, you can incorporate their method and apply it on to the remaining characters. The same goes for katakana.

Handakuten/Dakuten and Combination Characters

Before moving on to explaining katakana, I’d like to put some emphasis on “handakuten”, “dakuten” and “combination” characters, which you’ve probably noticed on the hiragana chart. These are not considered as separate classifications of the characters in the Nihongo alphabet, but these are used to modify sounds in the hiragana and katakana alphabets, to achieve sounds that cannot simply be achieved with the “a, ka, sa, ta, and na” syllables.

A dakuten character is also referred to as a “ten-ten” character. This is because of the “ten-ten” symbols, that look like small quotation marks (“), that appear on the upper-right hand corner of the symbols. Because of this, modifications on the voicing of the character are made. For example, the character “ka” （か）becomes “ga”（が）when you add the “ten-ten” symbol.

A handakuten character is also referred to as a “maru” character. This is because of the “maru” symbols (the small circle that looks like a degree (°) symbol) that appear on the upper-right hand corner of the symbols. Like the dakuten characters, modifications on the voicing of the characters also take place. As an example, the character “ha”（は） becomes “pa”（ぱ）because of the “maru” symbol.

Combination characters normally happen by merging any normal hiragana/katakana character with any one of the characters for “ya” （や）, “yu”（ゆ）, and “yo”（よ）. The writing for “ya”, “yu”, and “yo” in hiragana varies from katakana’s (kindly refer to the character charts). To put simply, you write a mini version of “ya”, “yu”, or “yo” beside a normal hiragana/katakana character in order to achieve certain variations in voicing. For example, to pronounce “kya,” you combine the sounds of “ki”（き） and “ya”（や）, but write it down this way: きゃ(“ki” + mini “ya”).

Katakana

Katakana are Japanese characters with vocabulary borrowed from the English language.

For example (written in romaji):

• purezento (present)ー（プレゼント = pu + re + ze + n + to）
• kamera (camera)ー（カメラ = ka + me + ra）
• suitchi (switch)ー（スイチ = su + i + chi）
• nekutai (necktie)ー（ネクタイ = ne + ku + ta + i）

Because these are words not under the Japanese vocabulary (as seen in hiragana), katakana has a different set of characters by which you write with. I’ve prepared a chart you can use as reference, and for future studies.

Unfortunately, the only way to master this is by memorization (and hard work). Like what I’ve mentioned for hiragana, I find tofugu’s “recall strategy” useful for learning and memorizing the characters. I suggest you try out that method. Associating symbols with certain imagery (like how the hiragana character for “ki” （き）looks like a key) worked out well for me.

And, likewise, the handakuten, dakuten, and combination characters also apply to katakana.

Kanji

Kanji is an elaborate study that I cannot simply explain in a single blog post. It takes months–or even, years–of study for most people (unless you have a very sharp memory, and can memorize all 2,500 characters quickly). But to give you a basic explanation, kanji are characters adopted from Chinese characters.

There are about 2,500 kanji characters, and each and every character varies in meaning. Some examples can be seen in the photo below:

There are some characters that can mean a certain word when used alone, but can mean something completely different when used with another character. For example, the symbol “hon” （本）means “book”. However, when combined with the character “ni”（日）, which means “day” or “sun,” the whole combined word changes into “Nihon”（日本）, meaning “Japan.”

As for character charts and memorizing the entire kanji alphabet, I think it’s best if you search it online and study it by segments. During my Elementary 1 experience in the Nihongo Center Foundation, we divided our kanji studies into units that we’d study every week. Each unit usually comprised of around fifteen (15) kanji characters that we’d have to memorize every week. It would be difficult (and nearly impossible) to memorize everything in one go. I suggest you work on it step by step, and study sets of characters every other day/every week, or whatever schedule works best for you! I’ll try to give some helpful apps, sites, etc. that you can use to learn kanji in my following blog post/s! (Stay tuned for that!)

I hope this was able to give you a good idea on what hiragana, katakana, and kanji are all about! Also, I hope this helped give you ideas on certain approaches on how to learn them.

If you have any questions/corrections/clarifications, feel free to comment below! As I’ve mentioned in my Introduction post, I’m not exactly an expert on Nihongo (I only took up Elementary 1 in a language school), but I still want to share whatever bits of knowledge and experience I have to you guys, so you can also get an idea of what the language is all about, and how you can also get to learn it.

If you missed out on my Introduction Post, you can check it out over HERE. ♥