by Virginia Minamoto

Created on: May 11, 2008

The Japanese language does not have an alphabet.

What it has is three writing systems used in conjunction: two of them are parallel phonographic syllabaries, and the third is a set of morpho-phonographic Chinese characters. (While the roman alphabet is often used for transliteration, it cannot be taken very seriously as a Japanese writing system. It is used to approximate the sounds only.)

But to get down to what all of that really means:

We can say that essentially, Japanese uses three writing systems, which are all mixed up, and this can make learning to read or write Japanese a formidable task for anyone accustomed to using one alphabet of 26 letters. It is by no means impossible, but it is best to clear up many of the misunderstandings of most beginning students make from the outset. Se we will start from the beginning.

The first set of signs that Japanese children and foreign students alike learn is called hiragana. Once that has been more or less mastered, the next step is the "parallel" sign system known as katakana. Now neither of these are properly alphabets. Each set is made up of 46 signs that represent a syllable (or more correctly, a mora, which is the specific term for Japanese syllables, which always consist of a consonant and then a vowel, or just a vowel, making them "open" syllables there is also one nasal sound /n/). Both sets contain the same syllables, but the signs are different in each set. Both sets can be expanded in exactly the same way (through the use of diacritical marks that look like quotation marks or circles) to make 71 mora, and there are many combinations, all of which are common to both sets, to express other sounds.

That's a pretty abstract explanation so far. Really, these sets of signs are just no-nonsense, straight-up sound representations. Each sign has a one to one equivalence with a certain sound, and it does not change or do anything tricky. And though both sets look different, they work on exactly the same principles and express exactly all of the same sounds. At this point, most students ask, "Then why are there two?" The simple answer is that the hiragana set is used for writing "Japanese" words, while the katakana set is used for writing "foreign" words. This is essentially correct, but can be misleading, since in actual practice they are used in various ways. Part of the problem with this explanation is the trouble with deciding what is foreign and what is Japanese in the Japanese language. For example, the words

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