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THE MODERN JAPANESE LANGUAGE

OVERVIEW OF THE JAPANESE WRITING SYSTEM

The modern Japanese language, especially, the writing system, is very complicated compared to English and most other western languages.

First of all, it uses a total of five different types of writing scripts: kanji, hiragana, katakana, Roman letters, and Arabic numerals.

Kanji Characters

Though the majority of kanji (漢字) characters are of Chinese origin, some were created in Japan, while others have been simplified for use in Japan. Generally speaking, we can treat all kanji alike regardless of their origin.

Though over 60,000 kanji characters are known to exist, most of these are obsolete Chinese characters. Modern Japanese uses between 2,000 and 3,000 kanji. Currently, the public schools teach the “Jouyou Kanji” (常用漢字) which is a list of 1,945 characters often encountered in daily life in Japan.

Kanji is typically used for Japanese words and words of Chinese origin.

The Roman Letter Alphabet (Romaji)

“Romaji” (ローマ字) refers to characters that originated in Rome, or what we call the Roman letter alphabet. The Roman letter alphabet was first introduced to Japanese during the sixteenth century and was used to preach sermons in Japanese by foreign missionaries who couldn’t read kanji or kana. This is its main usage.

In Japan, even though many English and European words are written in their native Roman letter script, its main purpose is to provide a method for those who cannot read Japanese kanji or kana to read Japanese words with Roman letters.

Arabic Numerals (Sanyou suuji)

The Arabic numerals (算用数字) such as 1, 2, 3, etc. were adopted in Japan about the same time as Roman letters. The name “sanyou suuji” means ‘numerals for calculation’, so as you can guess, mathematics, financial documents, price lists, and the like, are normally written in Arabic numerals.

The Japanese numbering system using kanji is normally only used for smaller numbers, likes a person’s age, or prices in a menu.

Hiragana

Hiragana (平仮名) is one of the two phonetic alphabets used to write purely Japanese words. It is also used to write what is called okurigana, when the root portion of a word is written in kanji and the second half, which includes the tense and mood, is written in kana.