Japanese Writing

A couple of days ago I got a cool little thing that lets me type in Japanese. I just hit Alt+Shift and viola: 日本語。

Reading and writing is certainly one of the most difficult parts of learning Japanese. There are three writing systems. Romaji, Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

Romaji is the easiest of the four. Romaji is Japanese written with Roman characters. So you already know Romaji! Example: Rōmaji

Hiragana is a syllabic writing system. That means that each symbol represents a syllable. Hiragana tends to look very smooth, squiggly, and curvy. Example: ひらがな　

Katakana is also a syllabic writing system. It is usually used for foreign words. Katakana tends to look very angular. Example: カタカナ

Kanji is the most difficult of the four. Kanji is the chinese writing system adapted for Japanese. The symbols do not represent sounds, but rather concepts. In fact any given Kanji could have multiple ways of being pronounced. Example: 漢字


So how about we learn some Japanese writing now? I'll be teaching you Kiragana, as that will be the most useful to start with.

First we're going to learn "O." In hiragana, that would be written お。

Next is "To." (Note: That would be pronounced like "Tow Truck") That would be written と。

Now I'll show you "Ko." This is Ko: こ

Finally, I will show you "No." This would be written like this: の

So how about we put these together and write a word? Let's write "otokonoko" which means "boy."

Otokonoko would be spelt 「おとこのこ。」


Of course, If we were to include kanji, then it would be written like this：　男の子　



I hope you enjoyed this little lesson ^^