INTRODUCTIÓN

Japanese writing
The Japanese writing system consists of three different systems: hiragana, katakana, and
kanji. For example, this simple Japanese sentences bellow (I buy a television) includes all
of the three:

Hiragana
Hiragana originates fron the cursive script of Chinese calligraphy. The form of hiragana is
round and smooth without any sharp angles. hiragana is a phonetic lettering system. It can
be used to represent the pronunciation of a kanji as well as used alone as a character in
writing. When hiragana is used as a character on its own, it can be a segment of a word or
a grammatical element in a sentence such as a particle.
Katakana
Katakana comes from the regular script of Chinese calligraphy. Its form is more angular in
comparison with hiragana. Both hiragana and katakana can be used to represent japanese
pronunciation. And each katakana has a correspondent hiragana, which has the same
sound, and vice versa. Katakana is usually used to spell foreing words. The words in the
chart bellow all have English origins, therefore are written in katakana

Kanji
There are massive amounts of kanji in the japanese language that are almost identical in
appearance with Chinese characters yet with completely different pronunciations and
denotations

Tips:
Hiragana placed above a kanji is called furigana, which indicates the pronunciation of the
kanji as in the examples below:

Fifty sounds (gojuon)

Gojuon (fifty sounds) is the foundation of Japanese learning. It is the Japanese “alphabetical order”
and its name refers to the 5x10 grid in which the character are displayed. By using a gojuon chart,
hiragana and katakana can be learned and memorized pretty fast.
Tips

1. A gojuon chart consists of five columns and ten rows. The first row contains the five Japanese
vowels and they are considered the most important of all, because the hiragana in the other nine
rows is pronounced based on a combination of consonants and those five vowels.

2. For each row, its named with the first “kana” (hiragana, katakana). For example, the first row is
called “a-row”. And for each colums,it is also named with the first kana (hiragana katakana). For
example, the first column is “a –column”

3. In gojuon, each kana is represented in hiragana, katakana and Romanization (romaji)

4. romaji is Japanese writing in roman letters for the convenience of transliteration for speakers of
other languages who don´t read any kana. Apart from being broadly employed in signs or slogans
aimed at international audiences, romaji is also a very common way to input Japanese into
computers. In the beginning phase of learning Japanese pronunciation, romaji would be greatly
helpful as well.

There are two romanizations in use today, the kunrei-shiki and the Hepburn system. They are slightly
different in marking the reading of some kana.