3.2 Japanese

The Japanese language uses a combination of four different writing systems--kanji characters, hiragana, katakana, and the Roman alphabet phonetic system romaji.

Kanji characters are derived from Traditional Chinese characters and are often found in combination with hiragana, katakana, and romaji.

Hiragana is a set of 83 symbols, called a syllabary, that encompasses all the basic syllables used for Japanese pronunciation. In written Japanese, the hiragana syllabary expresses grammatical parts of speech, verb tenses, and some words for which there are no kanji characters or have become obsolete.

Katakana is another phonetic syllabary consisting of a different set of symbols for the same sounds expressed in hiragana. The syllables represented by hiragana and katakana are generically called kana. Figure 3-3 shows the differences between hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters.

Romaji is used to write Japanese sounds with Roman letters. Romaji characters are usually displayed in double-width format.

Figure 3-3 The differences between hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters