日本語のレッスン一 (Japanese Lesson One)

日本語のレッスン一

For my first blog post I felt I should tell everyone a little about the Japanese language, seeing as I used Japanese in my introductory post.

Kanji

Japanese started as a spoken language with no writing system. In fact it wasn’t until Chinese scholars came to Japan that a written form was introduced. In order to communicate with the native Japanese, the Chinese scholars taught the Chinese writing system, built of pictographs, to the Japanese. By connecting pictographic characters to the Japanese equivalent words and adding grammatical markings, the Japanese were able to create a system known as Kanbun. This system allowed Japanese to read Chinese writings. The Chinese characters became known as Kanji in Japanese, literally meaning “Han characters”

Hiragana

Around 800AD the Japanese people formed their own writing characters to meet the needs of their phonetic language. Japanese words are not built of individual letters like English, but rather of phonetic syllables. The new writing system became known as Hiragana. This system of 48 characters was used when there was no kanji for a native Japanese word as well as for when the kanji form is obscure.

Katakana

Around 800CE the Japanese crated another set of 48 characters called Katakana (Katakana and Hiragana are both kana systems). Katakana means “fragmentary kana”, as the katakana characters are derived from the components of more complex kanji. These kana were used primarily to transcribe foreign words into Japanese, the writing of loan words from other languages known as “gairaigo”, and to write onomatopoeia. Katakana is distinguished by its use of short, straight strokes and angular corners.

For now I think this is a good place to stop. I’m sure many of you are already swamped by all this new info. For anyone wanting to learn Japanese one of the easiest places to start is memorizing the two kana forms. Until next time,

じゃね。(rough translation - Bye, Ciao, or Peace)