History UsefulNotes / JapaneseWritingSystem

* '''Kanji''' (漢字, literally "Han characters"; the original pinyin reading is "hànzì") are logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, together with a few characters that were coined or simplified in Japan, to represent words according to their meanings. The ''jōyō kanji'' are the 2,136 characters (as of 2010) that are taught in Japanese schools and are most commonly used in words, and 983 more kanji are approved for use in personal names, but thousands more are known to exist. Kanji often have several different pronunciations in Japanese depending on context, and [[AlternateCharacterReading variant pronunciations]] are often exploited for wordplay (see e.g. GoroawaseNumber). The various phonetic readings of kanji, which must be memorized individually, are classed either as ''on'yomi'' (音読み, "sound" reading) or as ''kun'yomi'' (訓読み, "practice/memorisation" reading); a given character could have more than one reading of each kind, or only one of either. Kanji may also have ''nanori'' (名乗り) readings used only in personal names, though people are hardly expected to memorize most of these.

** '''Furigana'''　(振り仮名), also known as "ruby" characters, are small hiragana or katakana written above kanji or rōmaji to show how they are intended to be pronounced. Furigana tends to be ubiquitous in works written for younger readers　and learners of Japanese, who are not expected to know many kanji. Furigana is a conventional way of indicating how the kanji in people's names should be read, particularly on business cards and so that Chinese people can have their names pronounced closer to modern Chinese than the ''on'yomi'' reading. They can also be used for creative {{Alternate Character Reading}}s, or even indicate what an invented "foreign" term in katakana is meant to mean; some modern fiction can get ''extremely'' elaborate with this.

** '''Hiragana''' (ひらがな) originated as a simplified version of Chinese cursive script, which in ancient Japan was practiced mainly by women; ''Literature/TheTaleOfGenji'' was written primarily in hiragana. Many variant hiragana characters existed until 1900, when a unique set was codified. In modern Japanese, hiragana is the "everyday" system for writing the particles that are essential to sentence structure, and the ''okurigana''　(送り仮名) suffixes used to inflect verbs and adjectives. Many everyday idiomatic expressions are more commonly written in hiragana rather than kanji. Vowel sounds are lengthened in hiragana by tacking on additional vowel characters, though straight or curved dashes may be used instead in informal writing, particularly when hiragana is used in place of katakana for the sake of [[UsefulNotes/{{Kawaisa}} cuteness]]. [[note]] According to the ''Giggling Horseshoe'' mnemonic, the word ''hiragana'' would be read as "horseshoe-five-alien with fly-quail." [[/note]]

** One fascinating result of all this is that while Chinese and Japanese are largely unintelligible to each other in speech, in ''written language'' the two are mutually intelligible to a degree that can be shocking to newcomers. A very common example is that a speaker of one language can often pick up a newspaper or other such article written in the other language, and even if they aren't intimately familiar with the grammar of the other language, they can still get the gist of what's written. While the mainland PRC, in particular, has seen some drift in writing over the [=20th=] century (in part out a ''desire'' to distance itself from written Japanese, due to the shared histories of the two countries) a lot of the older, more fundamental words from the Tang period remain fully intelligible between the two languages and "traditional" Chinese, used in Taiwan and elsewhere, remains much closer to the kanji of Japanese.

Japanese can be written in two directions: left-to-right, top-to-bottom (Western-style), or top-to-bottom, right-to-left (Chinese-style). The former system is pervasive on the Internet, while the latter system is used in traditional Japanese literature and {{manga}}, with panels in the upper right read first and those in the lower left read last; this also tends to appear in JidaiGeki productions, where the OpeningScroll will move rightward rather than upward. Before the left-to-right writing was introduced to Japan, all horizontal writings (e.g. signs above doors) were done in the opposite direction, right-to-left. Even after the left-to-right writing started to be used in books, the public signs still continued to be written right-to-left until UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo. [[note]]The same is true also for China. Remember that scene from ''Film/FistOfFury'' when the Japanese bring the sign [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/manropa/2399529133/ "Sick Man of Asia"]] to Bruce's martial arts school? That sign is written right-to-left![[/note]] There are still some old-style and legacy signs written right-to-left. ''Manga/KenichiTheMightiestDisciple'' plays with this when Boris Ivanov breaks into the Ryôzanpaku dojo. Since its horizontal sign is written in the old way (right-to-left), and Boris is unfamiliar with this legacy writing direction, [[http://www.mangafox.com/manga/history_s_strongest_disciple_kenichi/c177/7.html he misreads it as "Hakuzanryô"]].

* '''Kana''' (仮名) refers to syllabaries capable of writing all sixty-odd phonetic sounds in the Japanese language. (Technically kana represent not syllables but morae; the difference probably won't matter to most readers.) Each of the two syllabaries used today has 46 (formerly 48) basic characters representing five vowels (equivalent to A, I, U, E, O in roman-derived alphabets) either singularly or in combination with the consonants K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W [[note]]''yi'', ''ye'' and ''wu'' are unused, while ''wi'' and ''we'' are obsolete in modern Japanese[[/note]], plus the vowel-less ''n''. Some of these base characters can be modified by diacritics: a pair of short strokes (''dakuten'', 濁点 "muddy mark") changes the initial consonants K, S, T, H into the voiced consonants G, Z, D, B, and a small circle (''handakuten'', 半濁点) changes H into P. [[note]] If you've read ''[[FanWorks/SOSchip The Giggling Horseshoe]]'', the ''dakuten'' are flies, and the ''handakuten'' are dust mites. They constantly get people's names wrong. [[/note]] In modern Japanese, the small ''tsu'' (''sokuon'', 促音) represents a glottal stop, doubling the following syllable's consonant, and small versions of ''ya'', ''yu'' and ''yo'' change the ''i'' vowel sound of the previous syllable into a glide. [[note]] This is why, in the aforementioned ''Giggling Horseshoe'' story, the second hook (representing ''tsu'') can shrink at will and has a typing quirk where all consonants are doubled. It's also why Yammers the giraffe, Yusuke the fish, and Yorick the kangaroo can shrink at will. [[/note]] (The symbol resembling a small katakana ''ke'', however, is actually shorthand for a counter word pronounced either ''ka'' or ''ga''.)

* '''Kana''' (仮名) refers to syllabaries capable of writing all sixty-odd phonetic sounds in the Japanese language. (Technically kana represent not syllables but morae; the difference probably won't matter to most readers.) Each of the two syllabaries used today has 46 (formerly 48) basic characters representing five vowels (equivalent to A, I, U, E, O in roman-derived alphabets) either singularly or in combination with the consonants K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W [[note]]''yi'', ''ye'' and ''wu'' are unused, while ''wi'' and ''we'' are obsolete in modern Japanese[[/note]], plus the vowel-less ''n''. Some of these base characters can be modified by diacritics: a pair of short strokes (''dakuten'', 濁点 "muddy mark") changes the initial consonants K, S, T, H into the voiced consonants G, Z, D, B, and a small circle (''handakuten'', 半濁点) changes H into P. In modern Japanese, the small ''tsu'' (''sokuon'', 促音) represents a glottal stop, doubling the following syllable's consonant, and small versions of ''ya'', ''yu'' and ''yo'' change the ''i'' vowel sound of the previous syllable into a glide. (The symbol resembling a small katakana ''ke'', however, is actually shorthand for a counter word pronounced either ''ka'' or ''ga''.)

** '''Hiragana''' (ひらがな) originated as a simplified version of Chinese cursive script, which in ancient Japan was practiced mainly by women; ''Literature/TheTaleOfGenji'' was written primarily in hiragana. Many variant hiragana characters existed until 1900, when a unique set was codified. In modern Japanese, hiragana is the "everyday" system for writing the particles that are essential to sentence structure, and the ''okurigana''　(送り仮名) suffixes used to inflect verbs and adjectives. Many everyday idiomatic expressions are more commonly written in hiragana rather than kanji. Vowel sounds are lengthened in hiragana by tacking on additional vowel characters, though straight or curved dashes may be used instead in informal writing, particularly when hiragana is used in place of katakana for the sake of [[UsefulNotes/{{Kawaisa}} cuteness]].

** The most common ''on'yomi'' are the ''kan-on'' readings, adapted from Chinese as it was pronounced during the [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing Tang dynasty]], followed by the older ''go-on'' readings, which date as far back as the 5th century in the Wu region (around present-day Shanghai); these readings tend to correspond vaguely at best to modern Chinese pronunciations of the same characters (but in a mostly consistent manner), but for the same reason they have been very useful for linguists trying to reconstruct Middle Chinese.

** The most common ''on'yomi'' are the ''kan-on'' readings, adapted from Chinese as it was pronounced during the [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing Tang dynasty]], followed by the older ''go-on'' readings, which date as far back as the 5th century; these readings tend to correspond vaguely at best to modern Chinese pronunciations of the same characters, but for the same reason they have been very useful for linguists trying to reconstruct Middle Chinese.

* '''Kanji''' (漢字, literally "Han characters"; the original pinyin reading is "hànzì") are logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, together with a few characters that were coined or simplified in Japan, to represent words according to their meanings. The ''jōyō kanji'' are the 2,136 characters (as of 2010) that are taught in Japanese schools and are most commonly used in words, and 983 more kanji are approved for use in personal names, but thousands more are known to exist. Kanji often have several different pronunciations in Japanese depending on context, and [[AlternateCharacterReading variant pronunciations]] are often exploited for wordplay (see e.g. GoroawaseNumber). The various phonetic readings of kanji, which must be memorized individually, are classed either as ''on'yomi'' (音読み, "sound" reading) or as ''kun'yomi'' (訓読み, "practice/memorisation" reading); a given character could have more than one reading of each kind, or only one of either. Kanji may also have ''nanori'' (名乗り) readings used only in personal names, though people are hardly expected to memorize most of these.\\
The ''on'yomi'' derive from the morphosyllabic character readings of the UsefulNotes/ChineseLanguage, but due to Japanese having a simpler phonetic system than Chinese, they often include vowel modifications or consonantal suffixes (usually ''tsu'', ''ku'', ''ki'', ''chi'' or ''n''). This contrasts with the predominantly multisyllabic ''kun'yomi'', which mainly represent ''yamato kotoba'', the indigenous Japanese language. ("Zero" is one of the very few loanwords to be adopted as the ''kun'yomi'' of a character.)\\
The most common ''on'yomi'' are the ''kan-on'' readings, adapted from Chinese as it was pronounced during the [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing Tang dynasty]], followed by the older ''go-on'' readings, which date as far back as the 5th century; these readings tend to correspond vaguely at best to modern Chinese pronunciations of the same characters, but for the same reason they have been very useful for linguists trying to reconstruct Middle Chinese.

* '''Kanji''' (literally "Han characters"; the original pinyin reading is "hànzì") are logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, together with a few characters that were coined or simplified in Japan, to represent words according to their meanings. The ''jōyō kanji'' are the 2,136 characters (as of 2010) that are taught in Japanese schools and are most commonly used in words, and 983 more kanji are approved for use in personal names, but thousands more are known to exist. Kanji often have several different pronunciations in Japanese depending on context, and [[AlternateCharacterReading variant pronunciations]] are often exploited for wordplay (see e.g. GoroawaseNumber). The various phonetic readings of kanji, which must be memorized individually, are classed either as ''on'yomi'' ("sound" reading) or as ''kun'yomi'' ("meaning" reading); a given character could have more than one reading of each kind, or only one of either. Kanji may also have ''nanori'' readings used only in personal names, though people are hardly expected to memorize most of these.\\

** '''Ateji''' (literally "assigned characters") are compounds of kanji in which the sounds of the readings are used without regard to the characters' meanings; this is used for some native Japanese words (e.g. "sushi" and "kabuki") as well as some loanwords and foreign names. Ateji is also used to refer to the opposite process, ''jukujikun'', where a multi-character compound is given a reading not based on ''kun'yomi'' or ''on'yomi'' but corresponding to meaning only.

* '''Kana''' refers to syllabaries capable of writing all sixty-odd phonetic sounds in the Japanese language. (Technically kana represent not syllables but morae; the difference probably won't matter to most readers.) Each of the two syllabaries used today has 46 (formerly 48) basic characters representing five vowels (equivalent to A, I, U, E, O in roman-derived alphabets) either singularly or in combination with the consonants K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W [[note]]''yi'', ''ye'' and ''wu'' are unusued, while ''wi'' and ''we'' are obsolete in modern Japanese[[/note]], plus the vowel-less ''n''. Some of these base characters can be modified by diacritics: a pair of short strokes (''dakuten'') changes the initial consonants K, S, T, H into the voiced consonants G, Z, D, B, and a small circle (''handakuten'') changes H into P. In modern Japanese, the small ''tsu'' (''sokuon'') represents a glottal stop, doubling the following syllable's consonant, and small versions of ''ya'', ''yu'' and ''yo'' change the ''i'' vowel sound of the previous syllable into a glide. (The symbol resembling a small katakana ''ke'', however, is actually shorthand for a counter word pronounced either ''ka'' or ''ga''.)
** '''Man'yōgana''' were the earliest, nonstandardized attempts at using Chinese characters to represent Japanese sounds. Named for the ''Man'yōshū'', the oldest surviving anthology of Japanese poetry dating from the Nara period, though earlier examples of ''man'yōgana'' have been found. The ''Iroha-uta'', a famous poem whose 47 characters formerly defined the phonetic ordering system for Japanese, was originally written in ''man'yōgana''.
** '''Hiragana''' originated as a simplified version of Chinese cursive script, which in ancient Japan was practiced mainly by women; ''Literature/TheTaleOfGenji'' was written primarily in hiragana. Many variant hiragana characters existed until 1900, when a unique set was codified. In modern Japanese, hiragana is the "everyday" system for writing the particles that are essential to sentence structure, and the ''okurigana'' suffixes used to inflect verbs and adjectives. Many everyday idiomatic expressions are more commonly written in hiragana rather than kanji. Vowel sounds are lengthened in hiragana by tacking on additional vowel characters, though straight or curved dashes may be used instead in informal writing, particularly when hiragana is used in place of katakana for the sake of [[UsefulNotes/{{Kawaisa}} cuteness]].
** '''Katakana''' is more angular than hiragana. It was probably invented sometime during the Heian period by Buddhist monks, who used it to insert Japanese particles into Chinese texts, and is still used in dictionaries for writing ''on'yomi''. Nowadays, however, katakana is the usual way of writing loanwords and foreign names in Japanese text, though this tends to distort their pronunciations in ways that UsefulNotes/JapaneseRomanization often attempts to correct for. Besides its use to represent foreign words, katakana is also used for onomatopoeia, for emphasizing words, and for some personal names. In katakana, long vowels are represented by a dash following a character. To reduce pronunciation distortions, "extended kakatana" adds several additional symbols that are sometimes used for representing sounds that are not part of the Japanese language, particularly "v" (「ヴ」).
** '''Furigana''', also known as "ruby" characters, are small hiragana or katakana written above kanji or rōmaji to show how they are intended to be pronounced. Furigana tends to be ubiquitous in works written for younger readers, who are not expected to know very many kanji. Furigana is a conventional way of indicating how the kanji in people's names should be read, particularly on business cards and so that Chinese people can have their names pronounced closer to modern Chinese than the ''on'yomi'' reading. They can also be used for creative {{Alternate Character Reading}}s, or even indicate what an invented "foreign" term in katakana is meant to mean; some modern fiction can get ''extremely'' elaborate with this.
* '''Rōmaji''' are Roman letters used for the exact representation foreign names. They can also be used as initials, in which case they are pronounced approximately as they would be in English. "L" and "R" are distinguished (pronounced "eru" and "aru", respectively), as are "V" and "B" ("bui" and "bii"). [[UsefulNotes/JapaneseRomanization Romanized Japanese text]] is also known as rōmaji.
* '''Yakumono''' (punctuation) was not originally part of Japanese writing, but was adopted on the Western model during the UsefulNotes/MeijiRestoration. Punctuation marks in printed Japanese look different from their Western counterparts, not least in that they are almost invariably monospaced (like other Japanese characters).

** One fascinating result of all this is that while Chinese and Japanese are largely unintelligible to each other in speech, in ''written language'' the two are mutually intelligible to a degree that can be shocking to newcomers. A very common example is that a speaker of one language can often pick up a newspaper or other such article written in the other language, and even if they aren't intimately familiar with the grammar of the other language, they can still get the gist of what's written. While the mainland PRC, in particular, has seen some drift in writing over the [=20th=] century (in part out a ''desire'' to distance itself from written Japanese, due to the shared histories of the two countries) a lot of the older, more fundamental words from the Tang period remain fully intelligible between the two languages.

* '''Kana''' refers to syllabaries capable of writing all sixty-odd phonetic sounds in the Japanese language. (Technically kana represent not syllables but morae. The difference probably won't matter to you.). Each of the two syllabaries used today has 46 (formerly 48) basic characters representing the five vowels (A, I, U, E, O) either singularly or in combination with the consonants K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W [[note]]''yi'', ''ye'' and ''wu'' are unusued, while ''wi'' and ''we'' are obsolete in modern Japanese[[/note]], plus the vowelless ''n''. Some of these base characters can be modified by diacritics: a pair of short strokes (''dakuten'') changes the initial consonants K, S, T, H into the voiced consonants G, Z, D, B, and a small circle (''handakuten'') changes H into P. In modern Japanese, the small ''tsu'' (''sokuon'') represents a glottal stop, doubling the following syllable's consonant, and small versions of ''ya'', ''yu'' and ''yo'' change the ''i'' vowel sound of the previous syllable into a glide. (The symbol resembling a small katakana ''ke'', however, is actually shorthand for a counter word pronounced either ''ka'' or ''ga''.)

** '''Furigana''', also known as "ruby" characters, are small hiragana or katakana written above kanji or rōmaji to show how they are intended to be pronounced. Furigana tends to be ubiquitous in works written for younger readers, who are not expected to know very many kanji. Furigana is a conventional way of indicating how the kanji in people's names should be read, particularly on business cards and so that Chinese people can have their names pronounced closer to modern Chinese than the ''on'yomi'' reading. They can also be used for creative {{Alternate Character Reading}}s.

The ''on'yomi'' derive from the morphosyllabic character readings of the ChineseLanguage, but due to Japanese having a simpler phonetic system than Chinese, they often include vowel modifications or consonantal suffixes (usually ''tsu'', ''ku'', ''ki'', ''chi'' or ''n''). This contrasts with the predominantly multisyllabic ''kun'yomi'', which mainly represent ''yamato kotoba'', the indigenous Japanese language. ("Zero" is one of the very few loanwords to be adopted as the ''kun'yomi'' of a character.)\\

Japanese can be written in two directions: left-to-right, top-to-bottom (Western-style), or top-to-bottom, right-to-left (Chinese-style). The former system is pervasive on the Internet, while the latter system is used in traditional Japanese literature and {{manga}}, with panels in the upper right read first and those in the lower left read last; this also tends to appear in JidaiGeki productions, where the OpeningScroll will move rightward rather than upward. Before the left-to-right writing was introduced to Japan, all horizontal writings (e.g. signs above doors) were done in the opposite direction, right-to-left. Even after the left-to-right writing started to be used in books, the public signs still continued to be written right-to-left until UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo. [[note]]The same is true also for China. Remember that scene from ''Film/FistOfFury'' when the Japanese bring the sign [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/manropa/2399529133/ "Sick Man of Asia"]] to Bruce's martial arts school? That sign is written right-to-left![[/note]] There are still some old-style and legacy signs written right-to-left. ''KenichiTheMightiestDisciple'' plays with this when Boris Ivanov breaks into the Ryôzanpaku dojo. Since its horizontal sign is written in the old way (right-to-left), and Boris is unfamiliar with this legacy writing direction, [[http://www.mangafox.com/manga/history_s_strongest_disciple_kenichi/c177/7.html he misreads it as "Hakuzanryô"]].

* '''Kanji''' (literally "Han characters") are logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, together with a few characters that were coined or simplified in Japan, to represent words according to their meanings. The ''jōyō kanji'' are the 2,136 characters (as of 2010) that are taught in Japanese schools and are most commonly used in words, and 983 more kanji are approved for use in personal names, but thousands more are known to exist. Kanji often have several different pronunciations in Japanese depending on context, and [[AlternateCharacterReading variant pronunciations]] are often exploited for wordplay (see e.g. GoroawaseNumber). The various phonetic readings of kanji, which must be memorized individually, are classed either as ''on'yomi'' ("sound" reading) or as ''kun'yomi'' ("meaning" reading); a given character could have more than one reading of each kind, or only one of either. Kanji may also have ''nanori'' readings used only in personal names, though people are hardly expected to memorize most of these.\\

Japanese can be written in two directions: left-to-right, top-to-bottom (Western-style), or top-to-bottom, right-to-left (Chinese-style). The former system is pervasive on the Internet, while the latter system is used in traditional Japanese literature and {{manga}}, with panels in the upper right read first and those in the lower left read last; this also tends to appear in JidaiGeki productions, where the OpeningScroll will move rightward rather than upward. Before the left-to-right writing was introduced to Japan, all horizontal writings (e.g. signs above doors) were done in the opposite direction, right-to-left. Even after the left-to-right writing started to be used in books, the public signs still continued to be written right-to-left until the WWII. [[note]]The same is true also for China. Remember that scene from ''Film/FistOfFury'' when the Japanese bring the sign [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/manropa/2399529133/ "Sick Man of Asia"]] to Bruce's martial arts school? That sign is written right-to-left![[/note]] There are still some old-style and legacy signs written right-to-left. ''KenichiTheMightiestDisciple'' plays with this when Boris Ivanov breaks into the Ryôzanpaku dojo. Since its horizontal sign is written in the old way (right-to-left), and Boris is unfamiliar with this legacy writing direction, [[http://www.mangafox.com/manga/history_s_strongest_disciple_kenichi/c177/7.html he misreads it as "Hakuzanryô"]].

The most common ''on'yomi'' are the ''kan-on'' readings, adapted from Chinese as it was pronounced during the [[DynastiesFromShangToQing Tang dynasty]], followed by the older ''go-on'' readings, which date as far back as the 5th century; these readings tend to correspond vaguely at best to modern Chinese pronunciations of the same characters, but for the same reason they have been very useful for linguists trying to reconstruct Middle Chinese.

** Single quotation marks (「 」) and double quotation marks (『 』) are shaped very different from their Western counterparts, and are used to set off not only quotations but titles and even some names.

* '''Yakumono''' (punctuation) was not originally part of Japanese writing, but was adopted on the Western model during the UsefulNotes/MeijiRestoration.

Japanese can be written in two directions: left-to-right, top-to-bottom (Western-style), or top-to-bottom, right-to-left (Chinese-style). The former system is pervasive on the Internet, while the latter system is used in traditional Japanese literature and {{manga}}, with panels in the upper right read first and those in the lower left read last. Before the left-to-right writing was introduced to Japan, all horizontal writings (e.g. signs above doors) were done in the opposite direction, right-to-left. Even after the left-to-right writing started to be used in books, the public signs still continued to be written right-to-left until the WWII. [[note]]The same is true also for China. Remember that scene from ''Film/FistOfFury'' when the Japanese bring the sign [[http://www.flickr.com/photos/manropa/2399529133/ "Sick Man of Asia"]] to Bruce's martial arts school? That sign is written right-to-left![[/note]] There are still some old-style and legacy signs written right-to-left. ''KenichiTheMightiestDisciple'' plays with this when Boris Ivanov breaks into the Ryôzanpaku dojo. Since its horizontal sign is written in the old way (right-to-left), and Boris is unfamiliar with this legacy writing direction, [[http://www.mangafox.com/manga/history_s_strongest_disciple_kenichi/c177/7.html he misreads it as "Hakuzanryô"]].

The UsefulNotes/JapaneseLanguage left no written record before the seventh century CE, when Japan was absorbing a lot of Chinese culture, including their way of writing and a large amount of vocabulary. While retaining its distinctive phonetics and grammar, Japanese began to acquire loan-words from Western languages in the sixteenth century onward, a process which intensified during the Meiji period. Due to this linguistic history, modern Japanese has a uniquely complex writing system, which combines logography with syllabaries.

* '''Kanji''' (literally "Han characters") are logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, together with a few characters that were coined or simplified in Japan, to represent words according to their meanings. The ''jōyō kanji'' are the 2,136 characters (as of 2010) that are taught in Japanese schools and are most commonly used in words, and 983 more kanji are approved for use in personal names, but thousands more are known to exist. Kanji often have multiple pronunciations in Japanese depending on context. The various phonetic readings of kanji, which must be memorized individually, are classed either as ''on'yomi'' ("sound" reading) or as ''kun'yomi'' ("meaning" reading); a given character could have more than one reading of each kind, or only one of either. Kanji may also have ''nanori'' readings used only in personal names, though people are hardly expected to memorize most of these.\\

** '''Ateji''' (literally "assigned characters") are compounds of kanji in which the sounds of the readings are used without regard to the characters' meanings; this is used for some native Japanese words (e.g. "sushi" and "kabuki") as well as some loan-words and foreign names. Ateji is also used to refer to the opposite process, ''jukujikun'', where a multi-character compound is given a reading not based on ''kun'yomi'' or ''on'yomi'' but corresponding to meaning only.

** '''Katakana''' is more angular than hiragana. It was probably invented sometime during the Heian period by Buddhist monks, who used it to insert Japanese particles into Chinese texts, and is still used in dictionaries for writing ''on'yomi''. Nowadays, however, katakana is the usual way of writing loan-words and foreign names in Japanese text, though this tends to distort their pronunciations in ways that UsefulNotes/JapaneseRomanization often attempts to correct for. Besides its use to represent foreign words, katakana is also used for onomatopoeia, for emphasizing words, and for some personal names. In katakana, long vowels are represented by a dash following a character. To reduce pronunciation distortions, "extended kakatana" adds several additional symbols that are sometimes used for representing sounds that are not part of the Japanese language, particularly "v" (「ヴ」).

The ''on'yomi'' derive from the morphosyllabic character readings of the ChineseLanguage, but due to the Japanese having a simpler phonetic system, vowel modifications or extra consonants (usually ''tsu'', ''ku'', ''ki'', ''chi'' or ''n''). This contrasts with the predominantly multisyllabic ''kun'yomi'', which mainly represent ''yamato kotoba'', the indigenous Japanese language. ("Zero" is one of the very few loanwords to be adopted as the ''kun'yomi'' of a character.)\\

* '''Kanji''' (literally "Han characters") are logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, together with a few characters that were coined or simplified in Japan, to represent words according to their meanings. The ''jōyō kanji'' are the 2,136 characters (as of 2010) that are taught in Japanese schools and are most commonly used in words, and 983 more kanji are approved for use in personal names, but thousands more are known to exist. Kanji often have multiple pronunciations in Japanese depending on context; unlike in the ChineseLanguage, it is common for one character to be read as several syllables. The various phonetic readings of kanji, which must be memorized individually, are classed either as ''on'yomi'' ("sound" reading) or as ''kun'yomi'' ("meaning" reading); a given character could have more than one reading of each kind, or only one of either. Kanji may also have ''nanori'' readings used only in personal names.\\

* '''Kanji''' (literally "Han characters") are logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, together with a few characters that were coined or simplified in Japan, to represent words according to their meanings. The ''jōyō kanji'' are the 2,136 characters (as of 2010) that are taught in Japanese schools and are most commonly used in words, and 983 more kanji are approved for use in personal names, but thousands more are known to exist. Kanji often have multiple pronunciations in Japanese depending on context; unlike in the ChineseLanguage, it is common for one character to be read as several syllables. The various phonetic readings of kanji, which must be memorized individually, are classed either as ''on'yomi'' (Chinese-derived reading) or as ''kun'yomi'' (which almost always refers to a reading derived from ''yamato kotoba'', the indigenous Japanese language); a given character could have more than one reading of each kind, or only one of either. Kanji may also have ''nanori'' readings used only in personal names.\\

* '''Kanji''' (literally "Han characters") are logographic characters borrowed from Chinese, together with a few characters that were coined or simplified in Japan, to represent words according to their meanings. The ''jōyō kanji'' are the 2,136 characters (as of 2010) that are taught in Japanese schools and are most commonly used in words, and 983 more kanji are approved for use in personal names, but thousands more are known to exist. Kanji often have multiple pronunciations in Japanese depending on context; unlike in the ChineseLanguage, it is common for one character to be read as several syllables. The various phonetic readings of kanji, which must be memorized individually, are classed either as ''on'yomi'' (Chinese-derived reading) or as ''kun'yomi'' (indigenous Japanese reading); a given character could have more than one reading of each kind, or only one of either. Kanji may also have ''nanori'' readings used only in personal names.\\

** '''Hiragana''' originated as a simplified version of Chinese cursive script, which in ancient Japan was practiced mainly by women; ''Literature/TheTaleOfGenji'' was written primarily in hiragana. Many variant hiragana characters existed until 1900, when a unique set was codified. In modern Japanese, hiragana is the "everyday" system for writing particles, verb conjugations and copulae. Many everyday idiomatic expressions are more commonly written in hiragana rather than kanji. Vowel sounds are lengthened in hiragana by tacking on additional vowel characters, though straight or curved dashes may be used instead in informal writing, particularly when hiragana is used in place of katakana for the sake of [[UsefulNotes/{{Kawaisa}} cuteness]].

** '''Hiragana''' originated as a simplified version of Chinese cursive script, which in ancient Japan was practiced mainly by women; ''Literature/TheTaleOfGenji'' was written primarily in hiragana. Many variant hiragana characters existed until 1900, when a unique set was codified. In modern Japanese, hiragana is the "everyday" system for writing particles, verb conjugations and copulae. Many everyday idiomatic expressions are more commonly written in hiragana rather than kanji.