A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Japanese scripts: hiragana and katakana

It is commonly known that the Japanese writing system is rather complex. It contains various types of scripts in which the language is written nowadays. This includes hiragana, katakana, kanji, rōmaji, and Arabic numerals; these are all separate scripts. Hiragana is usually the first one to be learnt. Followed by Katakana.

Hiragana and katakana

Hiragana and katakana are both two syllabaries (kana); types of script with symbols that equate to whole syllables.Hiragana and katakana symbols differ in shapes. Hiragana symbols have a roundish shape [ひらがな]while katakana symbols are rather angular and straight: [カタカナ].

Within the hiragana and katakana systems there is only one single consonant /n/ん and five vowel sounds:

                                   あ/a/、い/i/、う/u/、え/e/、お/o/

These five vowels are used in combinations with 14 consonantal sounds:

/k/,/g/, /s/, /z/, /t/, /d/, /n/, /h/, /b/, /p/, /m/, /y/, /r/, /w/, creating syllables.

Examples:

                                   か/ka/、き/ki/、く/ku/、け/ke/、こ/ko/

                                   さ/sa/、 し/shi/、す/su/、せ/se/、そ/so/

These sound combinations are arranged in hiragana and katakana charts and their alphabetical order called gojuon [五十音], which means ‘fifty sounds’.However, this is misleading as there are many more sounds in the Japanese language.

How many letters are there in the hiragana and katakana systems?

Within the Hiragana system there are 46 basic characters plus some modifications.Modifications are created in various ways using existing characters. Some are created by adding a dakuten marker or ‘voicing mark’ [“]called tenten (点々).

For example, the addition of a dakuten marker to the syllable く/ku/ turns the syllable into ぐ/gu/.

Furthermore, the addition of a small や/ya/,ゆ/yu/, よ/yo/ to hiragana syllables ending in い/i/ also creates new sounds.

For example, the き/ki/+ やsmall /ya/ makes the sound きゃ/kya/　[き＋ゃ＝きゃ].

Thus, alongside 46 basic hiragana characters there are additional modifications within the hiragana system.

Hiragana words

Hiragana characters and their modifications are used for writing ‘function words’ such as particles, suffixes and inflectional parts of words.

Examples of words where inflectional parts are written in hiragana:

話します       [hanashimasu]       to speak

待っています  [matteimasu]         I’m waiting

楽しい          [tanoshii]              fun, enjoyable

Katakana words

Katakana, instead, is used for writing foreign words, foreign names, some animal and plant names, and to add expressive effects to words.

Examples of katakana words

バラ             [bara]          rose

バス             [basu]          bus

サラダ          [sarada]      salad

スミス          [sumisu]      Smith

Within the Katakana system, there are also 46 basic characters and additional modifications. However, given the fact that katakana is used for writing foreign words which are a source of sounds that are not exist in Japanese language, the process of transcription into katakana uses special sound combinations. This means that there are much more sound modifications within the katakana system than within the hiragana system. For example, English ‘w’ or ’wh’ followed by a vowel is transcribed by ウ/u/ with a small vowel /e/ウェ, /o/ウォ, or /i/ウィ.

Wilson         ウイルソン    [Uiruson]

whiskey        ウイスキー    [uisukii]

water          ウォーター    [uootaa]

In short, Japanese language utilises these unique scripts to write its sounds.Combining sounds makes words which convey meanings.

This means that by using hiragana and katakana you can write Japanese phonetically.Thus knowing hiragana and katakana is essential, like knowing the alphabet.

You can download our hiragana and katakana scripts with the alphabetic transcriptions here below: