THE JAPANESE ALPHABETS:
ALL FOUR OF THEM

When I was having that alphabet soup, I never thought that it would pay off – Vanna White

How many Japanese “alphabets” did you think there were? Just one? Did you even think there was a possibility of a language having more than one alphabet? How many could you possibly need, especially when there are two phonetic alphabets being used?

Certainly having at least one alphabet would be pretty important, otherwise everyone would just be illiterate (though you never know, perhaps the Japanese communicate using special robotic implants). Four, however, is a bit ridiculous, right? Granted, even though all four of them are used, I would say they each have a different level of importance, which means we can focus on what’s most important for now and then cut out the fluff. That’s exactly what we’ll be doing, but first we should learn what they each mean and how they are used. In addition to the content provided below, there will be optional “extra reading” listed as well for all you over achievers (or sesame grinders, if you want to be Japanese about it).

So, four alphabets… Are you worried?

Here’s the good news: You already know one of them (or you’re only pretending like you can read this).

Here’s the bad news: You don’t know the other three, and they will take some time and effort. Luckily, I know how to make it as quick and painless as possible. It’s just like taking a band aid off. I’ll tell you to count to three and then I’ll tear it off when you hit two. Completely unexpected.

ROMAJI :: ROMAJI

Romaji is completely useless. Don’t learn it because you already know it - Tofugu

Romaji is “the romanization of Japanese.” If you are reading this, then you already know romaji. It’s just the English alphabet, and although there are some funny rules when using it to write Japanese, it’s fairly self explanatory.

Karate… Sake… Sumo… Sushi… Sashimi… Bento…

Recognize all or some of those words? When it comes to romaji, all you’re doing is writing Japanese words using the English alphabet. It’s pretty much that simple. Unfortunately, romaji is evil, and we won’t bother learning it because I don’t want to waste your time. You’ll get romaji for a couple more chapters before things switch entirely to hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Trust me, it’s for the best. Romaji will only slow you down and mess with your Japanese pronunciation, and we don’t want that at all.

That being said, however, one of the most common questions that pops up is “why can’t we just use romaji to learn Japanese? Wouldn’t that be a lot easier than all this other stuff? The kanji? The hiragana? The katakana? … You don’t need to be able to read in order to speak, right?”

It would be “easier,” sure, but it’s not worth it. What good things come easily, anyways? So why is romaji the bane of our existence? Let us count the ways.

  1. Different ways to write romaji: I’ve seen around five different “schools of thought” on how romaji should be written. With all these discrepancies it makes it hard for beginners to know how to pronounce certain things when the powers that be can’t even figure out a consistent way to do it.
  2. Romaji will slow you down: Learn hiragana really quickly, and you’ll learn Japanese much faster in the long run.
  3. Nobody uses romaji in Japan, so neither should you. Time to forget everything you just learned about this romaji thing and move along.
  4. It will hurt your pronunciation: Even if your main goal is to learn to speak and understand Japanese, hiragana is going to give you an excellent foundation for that – romaji will not.

And that quickly brings us to…

HIRAGANA :: ひらがな

Hiragana is “feminine, curvaceous, and lovable” – The Gakuranman

Hiragana is going to be your main phonetic alphabet, and it’s also going to be the first thing that we learn. By learning hiragana first, you’ll get a lot of added benefit. Some people have you learn romaji first, but that’s a bunch of hogwash and it’s a big waste of time. Not only that, but we’re going to learn it real fine (say that in a Southern accent for better effect), and spend a little extra time with this curvaceous, lovable alphabet. Why would we do this? Why are we going to make you suffer more now (don’t worry, it won’t be too bad) so you can laugh in the face of Japanese later? Let’s count the ways:

  1. Learning hiragana first means learning your Japanese pronunciation. Screw this up early on and you’ll sound like an obvious foreigner.
  2. Hiragana will help you understand how the Japanese language works, on a very deep technical level.
  3. Hiragana gives you a great foundation for learning Japanese.
  4. By learning to read hiragana now (and learning it well), you’ll really speed up what you’ll be able to learn later. Since almost all of our initial learning will be in hiragana, the faster you get over learning it, the faster you’ll be able to really focus on what’s important (everything else!).
  5. I want to see you suffer a little bit. Think of it like a test – if you can’t do this, then maybe learning Japanese isn’t for you. Language learning is really meant for the people who really want it. If you’re not really interested in trying, now’s the time to leave… Okay, who’s left? Great, glad to have you!

So how is hiragana used in Japanese? there’s a few different ways, but don’t worry about it too much right now. Just read it, enjoy it, and move on to the next thing.

  • Difficult kanji: You’ll learn to love this one. When a kanji is too difficult (too many strokes!), a lot of times it’s better and more common to write things out in hiragana.
  • Words with no kanji: Sometimes there’s a word that doesn’t have a kanji… so, you get to use hiragana instead (or katakana, depending).
  • Particles: In English, this basically means all those little words that connect other words together. Things like “and,” “am,” “are,” etc. When it comes to things like this, you’ll be using hiragana.
  • Suffixes: A lot of words end with suffixes. One big example is names. Maybe you’ve heard this before? At the end of a name you’ll see the suffix “-san” attached. It’s a nice little honorific, and it’s something we’ll talk more about soon, so you don’t go and insult somebody.
  • Verb & Adjective Inflections: It’s not something you need to understand right now, but hiragana is also used to give context to verbs and adjectives. The hiragana is what tells us if a word is past tense, present, negative, etc. We’ll learn more on this later. There’s plenty more to be done with hiragana, but let’s look at the other two really quick. We won’t dilly dally.

KATAKANA :: カタカナ

バナナ、パトカー、セータ、クリスマス、パソコン　←　someday you’ll be able to read this!

This one’s a bit of fun. In general, katakana is more angular, sharp, and full of corners. It has the exact same sounds as hiragana, except it’s written completely differently. Essentially, you get to learn the same alphabet twice (what fun)! It would be like learning your ABCs twice, once doing the whole ABC thing, and another time with a different writing system but the same exact same sounds.

So what is katakana used for?

  • Foreign Words: Japanese use a lot of “borrowed” words. This includes things like foreign words, foreign names, and anything else foreign. They use the Japanese sounds available in the Japanese phonetic alphabet to make the borrowed words into something (somewhat) similar to the original word. You’ll see, it’s not always super accurate.
  • Scientific Words: A lot of scientific words are written in katakana.
  • Onomatopoeia: The Japanese love their onomatopoeia. It’s used in daily language, and once you’re able to use it casually in conversation, you know you’re doing well. We’ll spend time covering onomatopoeia in future chapters, though it won’t happen until you’re at a more intermediate level.
  • Emphasis: It’s kind of like when you italicize words in English. Instead of italicizing things, you can just write them in katakana instead.
  • Food: Sometimes you’ll see food items on a menu written in katakana. This is a pretty good thing to know if you’re visiting Japan and don’t have enough time to study properly. You can study katakana, and then you’ll be able to know what you’re ordering at a restaurant (around 30% of the time). It’s a good little hack if you’re doing some last minute studying before a big trip. We’ll be learning katakana a bit later, but it’s definitely a “fun” one to learn. Did you know the Japanese don’t really understand sarcasm? I just sounded like a lying knee-biter all the time until I figured that one out.

KANJI :: 漢字

Kanji is about as fun as head-butting a curb, over and over and over and over… - Anonymous

Kanji are the “Chinese characters” that make up a large part of the Japanese language. To get by really comfortably in Japan, you’ll want to know 2500-3000 kanji. That’s like learning a very complicated set of ABCs that consists of way more than 26 characters.

Basically, you have a lot of work to do. Feel free to cry on my shoulder a bit if you’d like, you big crybaby.

Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs: Kanji makes up the “vocabulary” of the Japanese language, that’s why you have to learn so many of them! Enjoy! We’ll get more into kanji later, and we’ll take it slow. We’ll also use a really great kanji-learning hack that nobody else uses (and I have no idea why). You’ll become a kanji wiz before you know what hit you.

Additional Recommended Reading:

A video about a guy pretending to be a penguin:

Pay attention, because we’ll be using this video before the season is over!

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Japanese Pronunciation With Hiragana →