Yellow highlighted portions do not apply to online students.
Japanese Writing Systems 1
An Introduction
Alphabets
An alphabet is a set of written characters (often referred to as “letters”) that are
used to represent sounds. In Japanese, each character has only one sound.
But each sound can be represented by more than one character.
In Japanese there are three distinct sets of characters used
to write words. Two of these are alphabets (see examples
above and the first two characters to the right). The third one
is a system of pictures that was adopted from China (see the
third character to the right).
In the classroom, most of first semester is centered around mastering the reading
and writing of Hiragana characters. We will have Hiragana quizzes almost every
week. You will be tested on your ability to write the characters and to write them
in the correct stroke order (more on that later).
There are 46 basic characters with which you can write any Japanese words.
There are about a handful of little tricks you will also need to become familiar with
such as adding a ten-ten (the two little dashes that you see in the following
べ ), or a maru (the little circle added to this character : ぺ ), and
little Ya-Yu-Yo blends such as these: しゃ (sha), ちゅ (chu), and きょ (kyo),
character :
which consist of a miniaturized letter added or attached to a regular sized letter in
a way that combines – or blends – the two sounds (Example:
ちゅ/Chu).
ち/Chi + ゆ/Yu
＝
But once you’ve master the 46 letters, this extra stuff is a piece of
cake!
Some Hiragana can have their sounds slightly altered by the
addition of a ten-ten (technically referred to as Dakuten) or
a maru (technically referred to as Handakuten).
By the way, not all Japanese writing is composed of Hiragana characters. In fact,
authentic Japanese writing is a combination of two alphabets (Hiragana and
Katakana) and usually slightly more complicated looking picture characters
called Kanji.
“Wait a second! Why do the Japanese need more than one alphabet,” you ask?
Good question! Let me answer it with another. Why do Americans need more
than one alphabet?
(“What do you mean, Sensei? We only have one alphabet, and we
manage to write all of our words with just 26 letters!”)
Not true.
We, English speakers, may have only 26 letters when we list them by name, but
how many different ways can you pronounce an ‘a’. (Apple, Cake, Father,…)
Several of our letters have to pull double or triple duty when it comes to
representing sounds. Ever try to write a word and wonder if the "ss" sound was
represented by a ‘c’ or an ‘s’? Why does ‘g’ often sound like ‘j’?
And what about consonant combinations like ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘ph’ and ‘gh’ where two
consonants come together to produce a completely different sound (e.g., ‘laugh’)
– or even no sound at all (e.g., ‘eight’)?
In Japanese, every letter has one – and only one – sound (with only a couple of
minor exceptions). Not to mention, there are no silent letters.
I realize that I am talking about sounds and not letters, but my point is that while
English does appear to have fewer letters, several of them – especially the
vowels – produce more than one sound which often causes confusion for people
attempting to spell words correctly.
Wouldn’t it be easier if English had enough vowels to match the number of
different vowel sounds? Furthermore, one might easily make the argument that
‘sh’ and ‘ch’ – since they produce sounds that are not possible with any single
letter – should be considered separate letters and join our alphabet as #27 and
#28 in the line-up. In fact, why don’t we just invent a few new symbols to replace
‘sh’ and ‘ch’ along with some of those weird vowel sounds like that of the ‘oo’ in
‘book’?
English has 26 letters but far more than 26 possible sounds can be produced by
them.
The challenge of spelling aside, still it’s nice that we only have to learn how to
write 26 letters during our first couple years of grade school and not 46 like there
are in the Japanese Hiragana alphabet, right?
Again, not true.
Did you catch it when I said “English does appear to have fewer letters”? Well,
technically, it doesn’t. It doesn’t have fewer letters, that is.
While there may be only 26 letters in the English alphabet when we list them by
name, how many different ways can you write an ‘A’?
A, a, A, a and even ‘a’.
→
How many ways can you write ‘G’?
→
G, g, G, g and g.
Not only are there multiple ways of pronouncing each of the 26 different letters in
the English alphabet, but there are at least four different ways of writing each and
every one of them:
1. CAPITAL PRINT
2. lowercase print
3.
CAPITAL CURSIVE
4. lowercase cursive
Every one of our 26 English letters (which are technically “Roman” letters) can be
written in print or in cursive, and each letter has a lowercase and an uppercase
variation.
English speakers – those that still bother to learn cursive writing – use two
separate sets of the same letters. That’s just like Japanese!
And with either set of English letters (print or cursive) having 26 lowercase and
26 uppercase letters (for a sum total of 52 distinctly different forms per set), that
makes 6 more than the Japanese Hiragana or Katakana alphabets!
That’s right! There are more English alphabet letters than
Japanese!
For visual learners:
English
Japanese
Print (26 lowercase/26 capital letters) = 52
Hiragana (46 letters)
Cursive (26 lowercase/26 capital letters) = 52
Katakana (46 letters)
English has 52 characters
per each of two alphabets.
Japanese has 46 characters
per each of two alphabets.
(104 total)
(92 total)
Two Important Points:
1. Learning to write Japanese using Hiragana characters is not any harder
than it was to learn to write in English.
2. Japanese spelling is much easier than English because – in almost all
cases – each letter represents only one sound. In other words, Japanese
words are spelled phonetically.
Learning to read and write Japanese can be as easy as learning just 46 simple
letters – and a handful of tricks. Once you have mastered Hiragana, the primary
Japanese alphabet, you will be able to represent ALL of the sounds in Japanese.
You will be able to write anything that can be said in the language.
So let’s get started!
Hiragana consists of 5 vowels – A, I, U, E, O (in that order) – and 9 consonants –
K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R and W (in that order). That would only come to 14 letters,
except for the fact that there’s a little more to it. With the exception of the 5
vowels and one single consonant, N, the other 40 letters are all consonant-vowel
pairs.
It works like this:

Following the vowels, the next five characters are a combination of ‘K’ with
each of the vowels thus producing Ka, Ki, Ku, Ke and Ko.

The same is done with each of the succeeding consonants.

Y only combines with three of the vowels yielding Ya, Yu and Yo.

W only combines with A and O for Wa and Wo.

This produces 40 consonant-vowel pairs.

Adding in the 5 vowels and the single N brings the sum total to 46 total
Hiragana characters – excluding the ten-ten and maru variations and
several two-character blends mentioned earlier.
Some of the Hiragana characters
have a pronunciation that differs
a little from what this chart
depicts. Si, in Japanese, is
pronounced like the word ‘she’;
Ti is pronounced “chee” as in
cheese; and Tu is pronounced
“tsu” like in tsunami, which
happens to be a native Japanese
word!
* The picture above shows the first 5 columns of the Hiragana chart.
The Hiragana chart begins at the right with the vowels. Each of the columns to
the left adds a different consonant before each of the vowels creating 2-sound
(consonant+vowel) combinations (like ‘Ka’, ‘Su’ and ‘To’) that are represented
with just one symbol (like か, す and と, respectively).
Next year, when you take on learning how to write the Katakana alphabet you
will most likely find it even easier than learning Hiragana. Let me show you why I
say this.
Each of the following sets shows the Hiragana version of a letter on the left and
its Katakana counterpart on the right.
う ＝ ウ
か ＝ カ
き ＝ キ
へ＝ ヘ
も ＝ モ
り ＝ リ
に ＝ ニ
せ ＝ セ
や ＝ ヤ
“Again,” you ask, “Why do the Japanese need two ways of writing the same
letters?
Well, there are no capital letters in Japanese so when you want to yell or
emphasize something in writing, you use the Katakana alphabet. The Katakana
alphabet is also used to designate a foreign or “borrowed” word – that way a
Japanese person will know that the word is likely not to be appear in a
conventional Japanese dictionary. Many borrowed words, however, eventually
become part of the standard Japanese lexicon.
Three More Important Points:
3. If one takes into account capital and lowercase letters, there are actually
fewer letters in Hiragana than in the English/Roman alphabet.
4. You can write anything that can be said in Japanese using only the
Hiragana alphabet.
5. Katakana is used for emphasis and to denote non-native words.
Because of the vast number of borrowed words in the Japanese language, we
will not be able to avoid coming across Katakana. I will provide you with a
Katakana chart so that you can look up the characters and know how to
pronounce the Katakana words that come up. You will soon discover that once
you sound them out most words written in Katakana are merely “Japanized”
forms of English words (e.g., beddo/bed, terebi/television, resutoran/restaurant).
You will need to be able to identify the Katakana words that we encounter. You
will not, however, be quizzed or tested on reading or writing Katakana in general
until your second year of Japanese.
What is Kanji?
Kanji is not an alphabet. Kanji are little stylized pictures that the
Japanese adopted from Chinese. In fact, the word ‘Kanji’ literally means
“Chinese characters.”
Kanji characters do not necessarily represent sounds. They represent nouns
and verbs. They are depictions of people and things. They are often something
of a *Remus puzzle combining pictures of things to represent actions, emotions,
and abstract ideas. Asking a Japanese person (or your Sensei), “How do you
pronounce this Kanji?” is a more complicated question than you might think
because each Kanji symbol has multiple pronunciations and the correct one at
any time will depend on the context in which it is being used.
* An example of a Remus puzzle:
The answer is at the bottom of the last
page.
All you need to know for now is that each Kanji is a simplified pictorial
representation of a thing or an idea. In my classes, you will never be tested on
writing the Kanji characters (although we will practice); you will only be tested on
whether or not you can identify them. Below are a couple of examples to get you
started and to show you how easy this really is.
山 ＝ a mountain
木 ＝ a tree
火 ＝ fire
You will be learning to identify a few dozen Kanji characters including the Kanji
symbols used for numbers, Kanji representing elements of nature (like those
above), Kanji pictures of animals, and Kanji used to indicate family relationships
such as ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’.
Two More Important Points
6. Kanji is not an alphabet. It is a system of simplified pictures – or clumps of
pictures – that represent things and ideas.
7. In authentic Japanese writing (e.g. a newspaper), Kanji is used in tandem
with Hiragana and Katakana, but Japanese can be written without Kanji.
I have put together a Kanji page that contains all of the picture-characters I would
like you to be able to identify by the end of the year. You will also learn how to
pronounce the Japanese words for these things as they come up in our lessons.
I think you will find that Kanji is one of the most fun and interesting aspects of the
language!
← Kanji ga daisuki desu! (I love Kanji!)
Summary
In first-year we will focus heavily on Hiragana as that is the biggest hurdle
between you, the student, and making a successful start in your quest to learn to
read, write, and speak the Japanese language. In fact, it is best not to study a lot
of Japanese vocabulary until you are able to read it in Hiragana.
“Japanese Writing Systems 2” will explain further about how Japanese writing
works and how the 3 sets of characters are used providing several examples in
the process. “Japanese Writing Systems 3” deals solely with instruction on how
to write Hiragana. It is likely the most detailed and accurate explanation ever
composed of the general guidelines to writing Japanese – which, fortunately,
apply not only to Hiragana, but to Katakana and Kanji as well.
Take a minute to check your understanding of what you have read in this lesson
by answering the five True or False questions below.
1. True or False: Japanese has three alphabets – Hiragana, Katakana
and Kanji.
2. True or False: You must know Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji to be able to
write Japanese.
3. True or False: There are more characters in the English/Roman alphabet
than in the Japanese Hiragana alphabet.
4. True or False: Writing in Katakana is like writing in ALL CAPS in English.
5. True or False: In Starr Sensei’s first-year Japanese class, you will be
required to master writing the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets, but you
will only need to be able to identify Kanji.
Now take a break, have a snack, and use the restroom, if necessary. Prepare
yourself and then come back ready to make a significant leap forward in
mastering the ancient art of writing Japanese characters by carefully studying the
secrets revealed in “Japanese Writing Systems 2 : How it Works.”
Answer to Remus puzzle: original sources
→
oar + (b)ridge + uh + nail
→
swor(d)s + s