help pls! by PinappleJelly 8. Dec 2010
i am a complete stranger to japanese, but there are like a bunch of things called like romanji, hiragana, and katakana. can someone tell me what they are???? |
PinappleJelly 8. Dec 2010
i also know a little chinese, and I wonder if chinese and japanese characters are all the same. could someone also explain that to me please? |
Michi-chan 10. Dec 2010
romaji is basically the english way of spelling out japanese words by the way they sound. Hiragana is one of the 3 writing styles in japanese its basically for beginners. Katakana is the 2nd writing style in japanese and is for intermediate learners. Now you have one more which is Kanji and this ties into your 2nd question because the chinese and japanese do shar the same characters, Kanji came from the chinese alphabet. So that's it |
pirulipiruli3 11. Dec 2010
Romanji is how the word sounds spelled in english
Hiragana is the japanese characters, it's learned in elementary school first and then they learn kanji
Kanji is chinese characters and are efficient in that they make reading easier and faster. There are a lot of them though and can have several ways of reading them (the chinese reading (on) and the japanese reading (kun))
For kids they use furigana sometimes in books or shows. This is the hiragana equivalent of the kanji written above it
Katakana is used for foreign words usually, though I've read they also use it for animals and emphasis
Sounds complicated but they really do help a lot in reading and learning vocabulary. And it looks really pretty :) Good luck! |
McFlaura 7. Jan 2011
It's not romanji it's ROMAJI.. :)
anyway...
Hiragana are japanese characters used for writing the spelling of a word or a kanji.. If you could not write words in kanji you could use hiragana instead...
Then, Katakana, are japanese characters that are used when they spell out Foreign words... although you I read and also saw other people who use katakana in writing japanese words (instead of hiragana)
Kanji - are Chinese characters, and in my observation the meaning of the kanji when used in chinese is the same in Japanese. And like what pirulipiruli3 said, it makes reading easier and faster.. and yes furigana is used to show how these kanji are read..
If you are watching children japanese anime, you could see this furigana.
Romaji on the other hand is very helpful for those who does not know how to read japanese characters. It is used to show how the japanese words are read using english characters
EXAMPLE:
水 (kanji)
みず (hiragana)
ミズ (katakana)
Mizu (romaji)
Water (english) |
PinappleJelly 8. Jan 2011
thanks a bunch!!! |
