Japanese writing

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The Japanese script derives from the Chinese script, which was brought to Japan via Korea in the 17th century IV. Japanese writing comprises three classical writing systems and one of transcription:

• Kana, silages:
  • Hiragana (ら future boundary), syllable for words of Japanese origin.
  • Katakana (syllable songs), a syllable used mainly for words of foreign origin.
• Kanji (. noted), characters of Chinese origin.
• Rōmaji (crying out), Japanese representation with the Latin alphabet.

The katakana was created by Buddhist monks, while the hiragana was developed by aristocratic women. For this reason, even today, hiragana is considered a writing system with a certain feminine or even childish touch. Nowadays, katakana is used to phonetically write words of foreign origin (外来語), particularly names of places and people. It is also used to write onomatopoeia and, figuratively, to emphasize words, similar to the exclusive use of capital letters, when you want to attract attention. The hiragana, for its part, is combined with the kanji as part of Japanese grammar. Over the past few decades, Japanese has adopted many foreign words, most of which are of English origin and a few of German. There are also words that come from Spanish, and that were adopted a few centuries ago, when Spanish and Portuguese missionaries arrived in Japan for the first time. For example, カッパ (kappa, cape) and maybe also パン (bread).

Japanese makes use of the Roman alphabet under the name rōmaji. It is used to write brand or company names and also to write internationally recognized acronyms such as CD. There are different romanization systems, of which the best known is the Hepburn system (which is the most widely accepted and is used on Wikipedia), although the Kunrei-shiki is the official (government) system in Japan.

Originally there was a small number of possible syllables, but in recent years, due to the growing influence of foreign languages (especially English), some sounds have been added that can only be written in katakana (ti, tu, di, du, tse, che, etc.)

The Japanese use the same writing instruments as the Westerners, that is, pencils and pens. However, the brush is by tradition the basis for the teaching of Japanese calligraphy (Shodō). Good handwriting is considered in Japan as a benchmark of personality and good brush calligraphy as a high form of artistic expression.

The following table shows some examples:

Writing Choice

Japanese calligraphy.

All words in Japanese can be written in katakana, hiragana, or romaji. Many words have their kanji form as well. The choice of writing system depends on many factors.

In hiragana, the words of Japanese are usually written. Katakana is used for foreign words and for onomatopoeia produced by objects.

Although any Japanese word can be written using hiragana and katakana (and there have even been proposals to abolish kanji), the relatively limited number of sounds in Japanese means that it has a large number of homophones, that is, different words have the same pronunciation but their meaning is different. Under this premise, the exclusive use of syllabaries would cause difficulties when reading, while with kanji, this barrier is overcome. For example, a syllable like hi (ひ) has several meanings, like sun (日) and fire (火). In these cases, the use of kanji is decisive for understanding the word. More subtly, kanji can alter a word in ways that are impossible in Western alphabetic writing systems. The Japanese verb for "see" reads miru, but can be written with kanji like 見る, 観る, 診る, 看る, 視る. Each version means "see" but with different nuances: 見る= to see, in general; 観る= to watch a movie or a landscape; 診る= medical examination; 看る= attend to, take care of, watch over, 視る= see, inspect.