The Japanese Language

History of the Japanese Writing System

Before the introduction of Chinese characters (‘kanji’ (漢字)) to Japan in the 5^th century AD, Japanese was a purely spoken language. Initially, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names written with characters which demonstrated their meaning and not their sound. Soon, Chinese characters could be used to represent either the meaning or sound of all Japanese words: essentially, the Japanese had taken the most difficult writing system in the world and made it more complicated. Eventually, it was decided that Chinese characters would be used solely to represent the sounds of the Japanese language.

However, early on in the Heian Period (794-1185), monks copying out great Buddhist sutras found that writing a complicated character for every syllable of Japanese was very time consuming: as a result, the characters were simplified and the resulting syllabary was called ‘katakana’ (カタカナ), meaning ‘part syllabic script’, as each katakana comes from a part of a kanji, as is shown below with the syllable ‘a’.

Around this time, women were simplifying characters in another way, forming a syllabary called ‘hiragana’ (ひらがな) from the cursive script form of kanji. These characters began to be known as ‘onnade’ (女手) as only women used to use them. One of Japan’s greatest pieces of literature, ‘The Tale of Genji’ (源氏物語), as it was written by a woman, is mainly in hiragana.
As an example, here is the evolution of the hiragana ‘yo’.

The Japanese writing system has continually developed over time, with hiragana and katakana becoming universally used by both sexes, the use of kanji being clearly defined and some characters being made obsolete.

Today, written Japanese is made up of kanji, hiragana and katakana and it is not unusual to see Roman script (romaji) on items such as signs or advertising.

Modern Written Japanese

To be able to read a Japanese newspaper with ease, it is necessary to know over 2,000 characters. There are 1,945 kanji in daily use (although other characters can be used, as long as there are small hiragana (‘furigana’ (振り仮名)) indicating the pronunciation next to the character) and around 100 ‘kana’ (仮名) (the collective name for kana and hiragana). Each of these scripts has a specific use; for example, hiragana is used to write verb endings.

漢字 - Kanji

These are characters taken from Chinese, although some have been simplified – much as is the case in the Chinese language itself. However, the two versions are not identical, as shown by the following character with the basic meaning of ‘change’:

In addition, there are certain Japanese-only characters (‘kokuji’ (国字)) such as 畑 (‘hatake’), meaning ‘field’.

Each kanji has more than one reading, but each reading falls into one of two categories: ‘onyomi’ (音読み) or ‘kunyomi’ (訓読み).

Onyomi (literally ‘sound reading’) are based on Chinese pronunciations. When a kanji is part of a compound, it is likely to be pronounced with an onyomi reading.

Kunyomi (‘native reading’) are based on Japanese pronunciations and are used when kanji stand alone. Many of the kokuji readings only have kunyomi; similarly, there are Chinese words with no kunyomi.



If you encounter the above kanji in the sentence 「あの人は強いです。」 (‘That person is strong.’), you would pronounce it as ‘hito’, as it is not forming part of a compound.
However, in the sentence 「人口が減少しています。」 (‘The population is declining.’), as the kanji is attached to another in the compound 人口 (‘population’), it is pronounced ‘jin’ (the compound as a whole is pronounced ‘jinkou’).

Although kanji may seem daunting at first glance, there are certain elements of kanji that make recognising them easier.

Some kanji are pictographs: characters that look like what they mean. ‘hito’, as mentioned above, is a pictograph: think of the two lines as representing the two legs of a person (indeed, in the earliest stages of the development of the character, the character showed the whole body). Many other natural entities are pictographs: 木 (tree); 川 (river); 山 (mountain); 火 (fire). Sometimes a little imagination is involved: you can see the fingers in the character 手 (hand), but the character’s evolved so much that now it bears little resemblance to a hand at all!

Some kanji also contain ‘radicals’. These are parts of kanji used to group them together (knowledge of radicals is very useful if you want to use a Japanese dictionary).

For example, the radical 氵denotes ‘water’ (with the basic kanji for water being 水) . The radical is present in kanji such as 汁 (‘soup’), 漁 (‘fishing’), 浴 (‘bathe’) and 汽 (‘steam’) – all of which are related to water in some way.

Kanji are used for the ‘stems’ of words. For example, many nouns are made up of kanji; adjectives and verbs often have a kanji stem and hiragana endings to denote tense etc.



ひらがな - Hiragana

When learning Japanese script, it is usual to begin with hiragana. They are very simple characters compared to kanji (being four strokes at most) and can be used to create every syllable of the Japanese language.

There are five main vowels (‘a’, ‘i’, ‘u’, ‘e’, ‘o’) and consonants are always attached to a vowel (with the exception of ん, a syllabic ‘n’). This is why foreign loan words have to be adapted to fit the Japanese language, meaning that you sleep in a ‘beddo’ and there is a breed of dog called a ‘paggu’ (pug)!


These are all of the basic hiragana that are used in modern Japanese. The first five characters are the vowels. In order to find out how to pronounce the character, first, find out the consonant and then look up the chart to find the vowel.
For example, the second line of hiragana in the chart reads ‘ka’, ‘ki’, ‘ku’, ‘ke’, ‘ko’.
As ever, there are some exceptions. し is pronounced ‘shi’; ち is pronounced ‘chi’ and つ is pronounced ‘tsu’. ふ is pronounced more like ‘fu’ with a very breathy ‘f’ than ‘hu’.

Hiragana are used as endings to verbs, adjectives and adverbs, in which case they are referred to as ‘okurigana’ (送り仮名). Hiragana are also used when a word has no kanji, for suffixes such as ‘-さん’ (‘Mr. / Mrs. / Ms.) and particles (markers which point out grammatical features such as the subject and object of a sentence).

Hiragana can also be used in another way, which is very useful to those learning kanji. Small hiragana (in this case called ‘furigana’ (振り仮名)) can be placed next to a kanji to show the pronunciation. Furigana can commonly be found in children's books, next to the kanji of peoples’ names (which can have many different and sometimes obscure readings), in text books for non-native speakers and, by law, next to kanji outside of the designated 1945.



Another useful feature of hiragana is that the syllabary is larger than it first appears.

Certain characters can have a ‘dakuten’ (濁点) or a ‘handakuten’ (半濁点) which changes the sound of the character. These small, diacritic signs (similar in purpose to an accent) affect different characters in different ways, but the signs themselves are always the same: a dakuten adds two dots to a hiragana character (゛ ) and the handakuten adds a small circle (゜). The table shows the different variants.



Yet more sounds can be created by incorporating ‘ya’, ‘yu’ and ‘yo’ with some characters. To avoid confusion, the added ‘y’ sound is smaller than a regular hiragana. The ‘y’ sounds aren’t pronounced separately; rather, they become part of the syllable. The Japanese for ‘Cheerio!’ (じゃね) is pronounced ‘ja ne’ and not ‘jaya ne’. き, し, ち, に, ひ, み, り, ぎ, じ, び and ぴ can all have ゃ, ゅ or ょ added to them.

Consonant sounds can be doubled by a preceding っ. For example, the phrase 「ちょっと待ってください。」 (‘Please, wait!') is pronounced ‘chotto matte kudasai’ (there’s almost a slight pause in a word with a doubled consonant, so ‘chotto’ sounds more like chot’to). Notice that the character is smaller than usual; like the ‘y’ sounds, the ‘tsu’ is smaller to avoid confusion.

Although Japanese is made up of syllables and is therefore written precisely as it is pronounced, hiragana has a few exceptions. は is used to show the subject of a sentence and when used thus, is pronounced ‘wa’ instead of ‘ha’; when ‘へ’ is used in the context of movement (roughly ‘to’), it is pronounced ‘e’. These are remnants of classical Japanese that are still in use today.


カタカナ – Katakana

Compared to the graceful curves of hiragana, it is easy to see from the sharp corners of the characters in the katakana syllabary that it was created by men. Once used only by men, katakana now has specific uses within modern Japanese.



The pronunciation of these characters is exactly the same as that of hiragana. However, the characters themselves can be a bit trickier to remember, especially シ, ツ, ソand ン. On the plus side, some of the katakana and hiragana characters with the same pronunciation look quite similar: き and キ, こ and コ and や and ヤ. Similarly, dakuten and handakuten can be added to the corresponding katakana syllables, the ‘y’ sounds can be used to create new sounds and adding a small ッ doubles the following consonant. Hiragana and katakana are used in the same way; they are just used for different things.

Katakana does have one feature that hiragana doesn’t: when a vowel-sound needs lengthening, ‘－’ is placed after a syllable. (In hiragana, this is done by adding another vowel). The Japanese for ‘computer’ is thus written コンピュータ.

Katakana are used to write foreign words. For example, ‘スミスさん’ (Mr. Smith) might come from ‘アメリカ’ (America). Notice how ‘Smith’ becomes ‘Sumisu’: there is no ‘th’ sound in Japanese and there are certain other sounds that are difficult to recreate accurately in Japanese. Breaking down foreign words into Japanese-style syllables is the answer: ‘restaurant’ becomes レストラン (resutoran) and ‘bus’ becomes バス (basu). Interestingly, some words of Japanese have European roots, aside from the modern influx of English. The Portuguese were one of the first countries to explore Japan and they gave the language パン (‘bread’) and Dutch gave it ヨード (‘iodine’ from the Dutch ‘jodium’) although there are a great deal more examples. Nowadays, as is the case in many languages, English makes up the bulk of loan words. Be careful, however: English loan words evolve or gain different meanings. デパ－ト (depaato) doesn’t mean ‘to leave’; it is short for ‘department store’. This shortening happens quite often with English words that take many syllables to pronounce in Japanese – and it can be disconcerting for a native English speaker!

Katakana are also often used for scientific terms, company names, in place of more difficult kanji, in onomatopoeia (which is prevalent in Japanese comic books) and can be used for emphasis: 「やめて。」 is the Japanese for ‘stop it!’ whereas 「ヤメテ。」 is closer to ‘STOP IT!’

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