Japanese Symbols
There are several different types of Japanese symbols – or ‘characters’ as they are generally known; and each can be studied for its own reason. There follows a quick overview of the types of symbols, then an in-depth look at each type.
Please ensure you have Japanese characters available on your system in order to view these symbols. If it’s working, the following character – “虫” should look (a bit) like a mosquito, not a box or a question mark. There are many tutorials available on google for installing Japanese symbols on your computer.
The Types of Japanese Symbols
The three main types of Japanese symbols are called kanji, katakana and hiragana. Kanji (meaning ‘Chinese Characters’) are the complicated symbols you see with lots of lines. They were borrowed by Japan from China, and each character tends to carry a whole meaning with it. You will often also see Japanese calligraphy
Katakana and hiragana are syllabic symbols. They don’t carry a meaning on their own, but like the alphabet in English, they build up words from individual sounds. Katakana are the more angular characters. They’re used to spell words that the Japanese have borrowed from other languages, so by learning the katakana symbols, you will already be able to read a lot of Japanese!
The last set of Japanese symbols, hiragana, are the more rounded characters. They’re used for grammar and words where there isn’t a kanji character for that word. Sometimes there is a kanji character but for some reason, hiragana is used instead.
Japanese Symbols – Kanji
Some examples of kanji are:
愛 – ai = Love
刀 – katana = Sword
気 – ki = Spirit
天 – ten = Heaven
They are often placed in sequences to build a more complex meaning, so for example 天気 – tenki – is the ‘spirit of heaven’, or in English, ‘the weather’. The word for Japan is made up from kanji:
日 – ni, nichi, hi = sun
本 – hon = origin
Putting them together, 日本 – nihon – is ‘the origin of the sun’ or as we more commonly know it ‘Land of the Rising Sun’.
In order to get by in Japan, you need to know about 1950 of these symbols. There are maybe 40,000 in total – but most are only needed by specialists in certain subjects.
Japanese Symbols – Katakana
After kanji, this is one of the most fun sets of symbols to learn. The reason being that there are only 46 characters to learn, and then you can then read a lot of Japanese. The characters are generally angular as mentioned, and as you gain experience you begin to spot the difference between kanji, katakana and hiragana very easily – without even thinking about it.
Here at Japan Club, we have a 12-lesson course which you can follow to teach yourself the katakana system of Japanese writing. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to learn a large number of words!
Some example characters:
カ – ka
メ – me
ラ – ra
Put them together and you get カメラ – kamera – which, I’m sure you can guess is the Japanese word for ‘camera’.
There are many, many examples, sometimes needing a little imagination to work out the meaning. There are certain sounds that don’t exist in Japanese (think of the problem with ‘r’ and ‘l’), so a close approximation is used.
レッスン – ressun – Lesson
タクシー – takushii – Taxi
パン – pan – Bread (from the French word ‘pain’)
ペン – pen – Pen
テレビ – terebi – Television (a shortened form of ‘terebijon’)
Japanese Symbols – Hiragana
From the fun point of view, hiragana are the least interesting Japanese symbols to learn. But if you’re serious about learning Japanese language, you must learn these – and probably learn them before any others.
They’re the basic phonetic alphabet in Japanese, and even when words are given in kanji, they’re sometimes accompanied by hiragana symbols to tell you how to pronounce it.
Examples:
こ – ko
ん – n
に – ni
ち – chi
は – ha (or sometimes ‘wa’ – it’s complicated!)
Putting these characters together, you get こんにちは – konnichiwa – which you may know means ‘Hello’ in Japanese.
You will also see kanji and hiragana used together to add grammar to the meaning of the kanji. For example, 大 – oo – has the meaning of ‘big’, but wouldn’t normally be used on its own. 大きい – ookii – means ‘big’ as an adjective. 大きくない – ookikunai – means ‘not big’, 大きすぎ – ookisugi – means ‘too big’. As you can see, the kanji character doesn’t change, but the hiragana does.
You’ll also see them combined in names, so 本田 is ‘honda’, but 本田さん is ‘Honda-san’ or ‘Mr/Mrs. Honda’.
Japanese Symbols – Conclusion
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief introduction to Japanese symbols. As mentioned in the article, depending why you’re interested in Japanese will depend which set of characters you focus on first. If you’re serious about learning the language, start with hiragana. If you’re learning more for fun, go for kanji or katakana first.
Enjoy!