One of the most interesting and rewarding aspects of learning Japanese is learning how to write Japanese.  Unlike the majority of languages out there that use the basic latin alphabet, Japanese has a completely different structure that is very interesting and fun to learn.  If you are going to learn to speak Japanese it will not be long before you will need to learn how to write Japanese or at the very least read it.

The Japanese language consists of three character sets or “alphabets” that you will need to learn.  They are: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.  Hiragana and Katakana (often referred to together simply as kana) are sets of 48 characters each and each character represents a single syllable.  Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words and Katakana is used to write foreign or “borrowed” words (for example you would use Katakana to write “football” or “McDonalds”).  Kanji are the more elaborate characters that were taken from the Chinese language.  There are literally thousands of Kanji characters of which nearly 2000 are in common usage.

Writing Japanese Hiragana and Kanji

The good news for someone that is learning how to write Japanese is that if you know the word but do not know the Kanji for it, you can write it out in Kana and it would still be understood.  So for the beginner the focus is on learning the 48 Hiragana and Katakana and to make that less daunting, the two character sets are actually quite similar.  In many cases the Katakana is simply a more angular version of the equivalent Hiragana syllable.

Practice is the key to learning how to write Japanese and with commitment to it, you can be proficient in kana in a very short period of time.  A solid step by step program that leads you through the order of the strokes and the accompanying sound will speed the learning time tremendously and Rocket Japanese contains a module called MegaHiragana that does exactly that.  Once you have mastered the Kana, then Kanji will be less intimidating and it won’t be long before you are reading and writing Japanese.

One other interesting point about Japanese is the format or way it is written in books.  The western style of reading and writing has the sentences reading from left to right (horizontally) on the page.  Japanese however, is written from top to bottom (vertically) and then read from right to left so if you were to pick up a Japanese book you would start reading at the “back” and read the print up and down not back and forth.  It’s just another unique aspect of how to write Japanese that makes it fun and challenging to learn!

Click here to easily learn how to write Japanese