Category: Learn Japanese Language

Learning to read the Japanese Alphabet should be the first stop for Japanese beginners. Japanese has probably the most confusing alphabet system for beginners.

Learn Japanese Alphabet consists of 3 different Alphabets that are used in different circumstances or sometimes used together to form words and phrases.

Types of Japanese Alphabets

The Japanese alphabet is overall known as Kana, consisting of three alphabets:

• Hiragana
• Katakana
• Kanji.

The Japanese alphabet overall is [su_highlight]phonetic alphabet where each symbol is a spoken syllable that represents a single sound[/su_highlight].

Essentially every Japanese word is written exactly how they are pronounced.

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Hiragana Alphabet

• Hiragana expresses the grammatical relationship between them (endings of adjectives and verbs)
• Hiragana is used to represent native Japanese words.

Japanese Alphabet Hiragana is a phonetic alphabet that contains 48 syllables that be sounded out to pronounce the word. Hiragana has characteristic cursive characters.

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Katakana Alphabet

• Foreign names and words of foreign origin.
• Foreign places
• Words of Foreign origins.

Japanese Alphabet Katakana is also a syllabic alphabet. There are 48 Katakana symbols that have similar sounds to Hiragana.

It is no coincidence that there is the same number of characters in both the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets as they both represent exactly the same sounds (some of them even look quite similar).

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Kanji Alphabet

There is a third form of Japanese Alphabet that borrows or modifies Chinese Characters called Kanji. Kanji was borrowed from Chinese writing at a time when there was no written Japanese language and it is still around. Japanese Kanji has different meanings than Chinese characters today.

There are over 8000 Kanji. Kanji are not syllabic and are used to represent abstract concepts as well as names and everyday words. An average adult Japanese speaker must know at least 2000 off by heart. Although you don’t need to memorizes all of the Kanji. Each Kanji has several different meanings and pronunciations.

Japanese words are pronounced exactly as the symbols show but one thing to pay attention to is if the character has a diacritic mark above it or not.

Make sure to practice pronouncing and writing the Japanese Alphabet whenever you can. As many times as you can.

Because Japanese has three different alphabets: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana and Katakana are pretty similar with roughly 48 symbols each( some used, some not. Hiragana is for general use while Katakana is used for foreign names, the names of foreign places and words of foreign origin. Kanji are characters that are burrowed or modified from Chinese. Japanese number system is a lot easier to learn.

Japanese Alphabet Examples

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Within any language or language group, there may be significant changes in speech, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The term used to describe these changes is called a dialect. Some words or phrases that exist in one dialect may exist or be absent from different dialect. The most common dialect is the Kansai dialect that includes the Osaka dialect. Osaka is the dialect of the Tokyo area and is considered the standard dialect for Japanese. Unlike other languages, Japanese dialects can be very different from each other, almost to the point where they could be considered different languages and need subtitles.

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Japanese Dialects List

Kansai Japanese – Second biggest region of Japan and host of many dialects. This group contains the Osaka dialect, which can be considered the “standard dialect” of Japanese. Kansai dialects are characterizes by their Kyoto-Osaka-type accent, strong vowel, copula ya, negative form -hen, etc.
Hichiku Japanese – A group of dialects in the southern Fukuoka region of Japan. Also includes the Tsushima Islands.
Honichi Japanese – Dialects of eastern Fukuoka, North and South Oita, and Hyuga.
Chugoku Japanese –
Shikoku Japanese – Similar to the Chugoku dialect in many ways but differet in accent.
Gifu-Aichi Japanese – Group of dialects in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan.
Hokuriku Japanese – Refers to the dialects spoken in the Hokuriku region of Japan.
Nagano Yamanashi Shizuoka Japanese – Named after the Prefectures in which they reside. This dialect is characterizes by a presumptive suffix -zura or -ra.
Echigo Japanese – Dialects of the Niigaga Prefecture.
West and East Kanto –
North and South Tohoku Japanese – The Tohoku dialect is spoken in North and south Tohoku Region in the Northwestern part of Japan. The Tohoku dialects differs a lot from standard Japanese.
Hokkaido – Dialects spoken in the Hokkaido region. This is dialect is separated into different groups. First, spoken along the coastal areas of Hokkaido, closely related to the Tohoku dialect. Second, is more in line with standard Japanese dialects.
Unpaku Japanese – Group of dialects that include the Shimane and Tottori Prefectures. This dialect differs from the others by the use of high “i” and “u” vowels.

Different Japanese Dialects of the Japanese language are spoken in many different nations and regions around the world, most commonly throughout northern Asia. However, the differences in regional dialects may not make one Japanese speaker nearly incomprehensible to another. In most cases, the different Japanese dialects don’t have a specific written form of the language, but there’s usually a certain amount of literature that accompanies each Japanese dialects.

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Japanese Dialects Map