Kana

Japanese language uses 2 kinds of alphabets, hiragana and katakana, which are made up of syllables instead of letters. It uses kanjis, as well (characters borrowed from Chinese). Today, we look at the alphabets; the characters are called kana. 

 

From kanji to kana

Hiragana developed from handwritten kanji, hence the curvy, flowing characters. Katakana is made up from picking out certain parts of kanjis, and they have angular shapes. Kana first appeared in writing in the early 900s, and it was called ‘women’s writing’. It was easier to learn than kanjis, and the characters were able to capture Japanese sounds, and write down affixes. Kanji were unable to do this (we’ll see why in the article about kanji), that’s why Japanese people needed to come up with a different way to write things down. 

It was quite a mess at first, with several kanas responding to the same sounds, and lots of characters could be read in more than one way. After language reforms, nowadays, kanas have only 1 possible reading, and Japan is one of the nations with the highest rate of literacy (despite the fact that it has the most difficult writing system)! 

We use 46 basic kanas and their variations (107 characters in total). There are the same amount of characters in hiragana and katakana, because they write down the same syllables. (So, 107 x 2 kanas.) 

 

But why do we need two different alphabets?

Hiragana is used for writing down Japanese words and affixes. Katakana is used for writing down foreign words (for example: chocolate, air conditioner, foreign names, etc.). You might notice, that sometimes a word that can be written in hiragana, is written in katakana, instead. That’s when you want to bring attention to it (kind of like something in all capital letters in Western languages).

 

Can you pick out which is the hiragana and the katakana in this sentence? (Careful, there are a couple of kanjis hidden there!)

 

Next: Kanjis! Or would you like to see a list of hiragana/katakana first?