3 Alphabets

So Japanese has 3 writing systems, which make it immediately extremely hard to learn and understand completely. However, you can break down it's learning by assessing its writing systems one step at a time, and they each build a-top one another.

Hiragana (ひらがな）

First, Hiragana is the one usually everyone starts off with, simply because it's quite easy to recognise and start memorising. You'll notice Hiragana has sort of a bubbly and round aesthetic with its characters, which distinguish it from other languages and the other writing systems.

To learn Hiragana, it's just memorisation. Once you are able to look at a character and read it, then you would have mastered it! So your approach to memory can differ depending on how you want to go about it, but the common ones are:

• Using a Hiragana chart (which are sectioned into common sounds)

• Using a memorisation tool (e.g. flashcards)

• Using a Japanese learning app

Katakana（カタカナ）

Next, Katakana. Despite sharing the sounds of Hiragana, Katakana exists to convey semantic meaning of foreign words. These are words that are traditionally not Japanese, and thus have been adopted into the language and written in the 'foreign character system'.

Take for example, America, which if you imagine when they were developing the fundamental Japanese system, they may not have known about the US, given it is on the other side of the world. Therefore, once they had knowledge about this new continent, they probably transliterated the well-known English usage of America by applying their own character system. However, to differentiate that the word did not stem from home, they use this foreign system to convey that. So, you get America = アメリカ (a - me - ri - ka).

Kanji（感じ）

Kanji originally has its roots in China, with the more traditional and script-like writing system. With a foundation in more symbolic language, Kanji is a subset of the Chinese character system, but read with Japanese vocalisation.