Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji,...Say What?!

Say what is right!

When I first got interested in learning the Japanese language,...I had no clue about Hiragana and Katakana. I thought that the written Japanese language only consisted of Kanji. Not so.

So you might be saying, "Well, what is Hiragana and Katakana,..in fact what is Kanjii?"

Let's start with Hiragana (ひらがな):
Hiragana is a character sets in which each character represents one sound in the Japanese language. Hiragana is used to write native words for which there are no kanji. Hiragana is also used to write words whose kanji form is obscure, not known to the writer or readers, or too formal for the writing purpose.

Now onto Katakana (カタカナ):
In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for those Japanese language words and grammatical inflections which kanji does not cover, the katakana syllabary is primarily used for transcription of foreign language words into Japanese.

and now Kanji (漢字):
Chinese characters (Japanese: kanji) first came to Japan on coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China. In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems.


I actually found that learning Hiragana and Katakana were not that hard if you studied well. Here is a practice chart showing you how to learn to write hiragana: