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What's the different between kanji and katakana? (or sumthing like that)? |
Travel Info i'm a non-japanese, juz interested in japanese since i've watched soo many japanese dramas..lol..anyway, i know both are types of writing in japanese language, arent they? so, what more, you know just the basic stuff, i'm just curious..thanx! Travel Tips There are actually 3 different writing styles. Two of them are phonetic, these are Hiragana and Katakana. These are the ones used to spell out everyday words but there is a difference. Hiragana is used for Japanese words only and it's the more "curved" version of the characters. You will find that sometimes there's a word that could mean about 4 different things depending on the context but that's not always apparent. Take for example the word "kami". It could mean hair, paper or God. Katakana is typically used for foreign words, foreign loan words and in some cases for emphasis. You can never always tell and sometimes need to guess what the word they're spelling actually is. Kanji are the chinese style characters that are a word or thought all in themselves. These have two (or sometimes more) readings even though they mean the same thing. For example the character for "mountain" could be read as "yama" or "san" depending on the context but there is no clear rule for this. In 90% of the cases if it's part of a compound word, you would say "san" but there's also the exceptions where it's "yama". There's no real way to tell and you just have to learn it. Source(s): Living in Japan for the past few years and still trying to bend my brain around the Japanese language. Other Travel Tips Katakana and Hiragana are the two basic Japanese scripts. Hiragana is for Japanese sounds and Katakana is for foreign words brought into Japanese. They have the same sounds but are different symbols. Kanji is the old Chinese script brought into the Japanese system. There are over 5,000 characters with different meanings. there are three types of writings in japanese: 1) kanji 2) katakana 3) hiragana. kanji is the chinese characters you see at restaurants, used in the japanese language. katakana is often used when transcribing a foreign language or onomatopeia. meaning when someone wants to say "television" in japanese, they will say "telebi" which is written in katakana letters. also, if they are writing a sound such as "bang", it will be written in katakana. hiragana is the japanese alphabet which is used when either there is no kanji (such as certain verbs) or if the writer doesn't know the proper kanji. when i was learning japanese as a kid, we often wrote in hiragana because we didn't know the proper kanji that expresses the word. hope that helps! learned japanese for 9 years. there are three different "alphabets" in japanese (all use the same pronunciation): hiragana katakana kanji Hiragana is used for grammatical markers and traditional japanese words. When looking at hiragana, it is generally more rounded than katakana. There are 46 different hiragana. katakana is used for foreign or "borrowed" words. when looking at katakana, it is generally more square than hiragana. there are 46 different katakana. kanji is the Chinese characters that look really complex, there are thousands of kanji (need to know just under 2000 to be literate) and many have several different pronunciations and meanings depending on what other kanji they are written with. http://www.mustseesights.com |
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