As an English speaking person who recently got into learning Japanese, I was intrigued by the use of the three writing systems: Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, however I could not truly understand why it is that way. I do know a bit about the history of these languages but that is not what I am interested in knowing; I wish to know what purpose these three separate systems serve in these current times to justify their existence of used simultaneously as compared to other languages having a singular writing system.
I tried to research a bit about this topic, but I couldn’t get a satisfactory answer. I thought Hiragana was supposed to be used for native words and Katakana for foreign words, but this assumption didn’t quite fit what I saw while reading manga or watching anime. I once saw someone say how Kanji was incredibly essential to the Japanese language, but I couldn’t grasp the reason, considering how these Kanji characters were seen with their hiragana pronunciation as a side-note, I knew it wasn’t worth just thinking about the explanations by myself, thus I thought of the idea of this post.
I wish to learn about the use of these writing systems from the perspective of a person who knows both Japanese and English well, is aware of how these systems are used in practical daily life and understands the trouble of someone brought up in an English medium, unable to grasp the significance of this system. This is my genuine curiosity and I do not mean to belittle the use of this system in any way.
People always seem confused about the redundancy of having Hiragana/Katakana when they both mean essentially the same thing.
But then I point out that we have Upper/Lower case letters.
We probably should point out that the symbol & means “Et”. As in “Et cetera”. Or Latin for “And”.
English Symbology is fun.
Those are all recognizable as the letters e and t though
Even the first?
Yeah. These are all the same symbol. The first time I saw the second one, the first one clicked.
Upper and lower case are part of the same written script and serve distinct purposes (emphasis, indicating proper nouns and beginnings of sentences, etc)
Hiragana and katakana are more distinct
I know hiragana and katakana are used differently than upper/lower case, but I honestly don’t see how they’re that much more distinct than upper/lower case. They’re differently distinct, but I wouldn’t say more.