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In fact, kanji characters can sometimes have a dozen or more possible pronunciations each.īecause there are thousands of kanji characters, it’s harder to describe how to identify them. Kanji characters represent ideas rather than pronunciations. Japan adopted the Chinese writing system over 1000 years ago, and today that system is known as kanji. Again, if you’re interested in learning more, both my Passport to MOTHER 2 and Passport to The Legend of Zelda cover the full katakana set, pronunciations, pitfalls, usage, and more.

Just like with hiragana, there are 46 basic characters to learn, and they’re all simple enough that you could learn them in a short amount of time. As an example, here’s the Japanese word neko (“cat”) again, but written in katakana this time: Katakana characters are usually just a few straight lines and tend to look boxy, blocky, and/or angular Katakana characters are also pretty simple-looking, but are generally more angular and blocky than hiragana. It’s an oversimplification, but katakana is basically a lot like our italics in English: we often use italics to mark foreign words, emphasize words, make text stand out at a glance, and so on. Every word in the Japanese language can be written in katakana alone. Katakana is primarily used for foreign words, but it’s also used for emphasis, drawing distinctions, aesthetics, and other purposes. Katakana works pretty much the same way as hiragana, except it’s just a different set of characters. If you’re interested, my Passport to MOTHER 2 covers the full hiragana set, how to pronounce the characters, how to use them, what pitfalls to look out for, and so on. There are 46 basic hiragana characters, and they’re simple enough that you could learn them all in a few days. As an example, here’s the Japanese word neko (“cat”) written in hiragana: Notice how hiragana characters are kind of curvy - they feel kind of like really weird cursive English letters or doctor signatures

In general, hiragana characters are simple in shape, are curvy-looking, and only take a few quick strokes to write.

Some examples: kimono, karate, teriyaki, sumo, Miyamoto, Toyota, Suzuki. Incidentally, this syllable system is why Japanese words are usually strings of “consonant + vowel, consonant + vowel, consonant + vowel” with occasional lone vowels mixed in.

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