Konnichiwa.
Yuko-sensei desu。Today in this Ask Sensei series, I'm going to answer this question from
my students.
Why do people use both Hiragana and Katakana in Japanese?
How come Hiragana alone is not enough?
And what is Katakana for?
So I'm going to answer these questions in this lesson.
I'm a Japanese teacher for many years and currently, I have five Japanese courses at
my online school.
You can find all the information about my courses in the description below.
Ok, let's begin the lesson.
Dewa, hajime mashoo! (Let's begin!)
Hiragana and Katakana are both phonetic letters, meaning they both indicate how to pronounce
the word.
In modern Japanese, we have 46 Hiragana letters and 45 Katakana letters that we learn in school
and use in our daily lives.
But if we already have Hiragana to indicate pronunciation, then whey do we also need Katakana?
You may wonder, right?
The answer is this.
Hiragana only tells you how to pronounce Japanese-origin words.
So, for instance, when we say hashi, which is a Japanese word, we use Hiragana to spell
it like this.
On the other hand, Katakana tells you how to pronounce non-Japanese words.
We have so many loan words in Japanese that we have adapted from other languages.
For instance, the word Pizza came from English.
Since it is not a Japanese word originally, we don't use Hiragana to spell Pizza.
So, if you use Hiragana like this, it's wrong.
Pizza has to be spelled in Katakana.
Katakana is used to spell any words or phrases that are not originally Japanese.
It's not for English words only.
It can be for French, Korean, Spanish, or any other languages.
So, I can use Hiragana to spell my name Yuko, since it is a Japanese name, but you have
to use Katakana to spell your name because your name is not originated in Japan.
Another function of Katakana is to spell the sounds that people, things, or animals make.
For instance, the sound Bang is Batan! or Don! in Japanese and we spell them like these
in Katakana.
The sounds that cats make, meow, is Nyaa in Japanese and it looks like this in Katakana.
So, these are the two major functions of Katakana.
Katakana is to spell non-Japanese words and also sounds that people, things, or animals
make.
Ok, since we are talking about Japanese letters today, let me quickly cover another writing
system that we have in our language, which is Kanji.
We already have Hiragana to spell Japanese words, right?
And why do we also need Kanji?
The functions of Hiragana and Kanji are completely different.
As I mentioned earlier, Hiragana indicates the pronunciation of the word.
On the other hand, Kanji conveys the meaning of the word.
Let me explain with examples.
Here you see three Kanji letters.
Do you know how to pronounce each letter?
Let me tell you ok?
This is hashi, this is hashi, and this is hashi too.
They all share the same pronunciation but the meaning of each Kanji is different.
The first one means "bridge".
The second one means chopsticks.
And the third one means edge.
Like this, it is very common in Japanese that several different words share the same pronunciation.
As I said earlier, Hiragana only tells you how to pronounce the word.
So, by looking at this はし in Hiragana, without any context, I cannot tell which hashi
this one means.
But when I look at this Kanji, I can tell right away that it means chopsticks.
On the side note, Japanese people learn about 1000 Kanji by the time they finish elementary
school, which is 6th grade and about 2000 Kanji by the time they graduate from high
school.
I would say average grownups working in Japan may know between 2500 to 3000 Kanji.
Kanji also helps us to see the units in the sentences easily.
For instance, when we see a sentence like this all written in Hiragana, it takes a moment
to figure out the meaning.
This one particularly is puzzling, isn't it?
It begins with はははは, four letters of Hiragana は in sequence.
But if I see the same sentence with Kanji, I can recognize each unit in the sentence
right away and understand the meaning.
Now I can see that the beginning was not はははは.
It was actually 母 (haha) with the particle は (wa), and the last Hiragana は was a part of the
word はし (hashi). So, this sentence reads haha wa hashi de sushi o tabemasu.
Haha wa hashi de sushi o tabemasu.
My mother eats sushi with chopsticks.
If she is someone who eats pasta with chopsticks, then you have to put pasta here in Katakana
since it is not a Japanese-origin word, and go like this.
Haha wa hashi de pasuta o tabemasu.
Today's question from students was why Japanese people use both Hiragana and Katakana.
Now you know that Hiragana is for Japanese-origin words and Katakana is for non-Japanese words
or sounds of things or animals.
We also learned the function of Kanji in this short lesson.
Kanji is to convey the meaning of the words and it also helps us to see the structure
of the sentence easily.
I hope you enjoyed today's lesson.
If you are interested in learning Hiragana and Katakana, I have the entire lessons on
my channel so please check the links in the description.
Also, I have five Japanese courses at my online school and all the courses are self-paced.
There is no time limit to complete each course so you can learn Japanese at your own pace.
At the end of each course, you can get feedback from me on your assignment.
The best price to get all the five courses is to sign up for the Complete Package.
Find all the information in the description box below.
Please leave comments if you have any questions that you want me to cover in this Ask Sensei
series.
Mina-san, Nihongo no benkyoo ganbatte kudasai ne! (Everyone, best of luck to your Japanese learning!)
Dewa, mata tsugi no lesson de aimashoo! (See you in the next lesson!)