In English, an alphabetized system is used which includes 26 unique letters.
In Japanese, there are three writing systems, Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji (Chinese characters), which are composed of 46, 46, and thousands of unique symbols respectively.
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What’s the reason for this?
Well, when forming the language, the Japanese decided to adopt two other systems, Katakana (カタカナ) and Kanji (漢字), as they often borrowed foreign loan words and adopted many words from China.
This way, the Japanese could separate distinctly where words originated from as a point of reference in communication.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of Katakana and Kanji uses.
マクドナルドの料理は食べやすいけど健康じゃないです。
This sentence roughly translates to “McDonald’s food/cooking is easy to eat, but not healthy for you.”
In this sentence, we see the word “マクドナルド” written in Katakana, and “料理” (riyouri) as well as “健康” (kenkou) written in Kanji, or Chinese characters.
McDonald’s is a fast food chain that was initially started in the United States but exists globally and can be found among many cities in Japan.
As a result, when Japanese refer to this restaurant with foreign origin, they use the foreign writing system.
The same goes for “Cooking” and “Healthy”, as these are words that when created in Japanese, were pulled from the Chinese language system.
As a result, the Japanese writing system selected is Kanji.
One thing worth pointing out is that when studying Japanese, you will find that some Japanese words, while have a usable Kanji version, the Katakana version is more commonly used.
While not that common, this is something you will want to pay attention to.
That’s all for this lesson. The team at Bondlingo hopes you enjoyed this quick lesson, and please subscribe for more quick reads!