Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji

Architecture for Humanity

February 20, 2013

For the Paper Cranes for Japan Challenge, the Architecture for Humanity team provided on-the-ground reports from Japan.

Karl's trip to Japan is approaching fast and furious. In a week and a half, he will be on the airplane crossing the Pacific Ocean. While he is cramming Japanese language and business etiquette this week, I (Hiromi) will revisit Karl's posts to set some facts straight. Anchor

The Origin of the Name "Ishinomaki" In the last blog "Gathering No Moss", Karl ended it with a Youtube video explaining the derivation of the name "Ishinomaki". As he explained "Ishi" means "Stone", and "Maki" means "Roll". The rock (or stone) in this video is called "Maki-ishi", and situated in the Old Kitakami River about 500 meters upstream from the mouth of the river. The Maki-ishi creates a small whirlpool when the water hits. The twirl pattern of the water created by the rock became the name of the city.

Unfortunately, we can't see the Maki-ishi anymore as the result of the land subsidence caused by the earthquake. As a matter of fact, the huge area along the Old Kitakami River got inundated by the tsunami, so the landscape is quite different from what you see in this video.

Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji Karl introduced us different kinds of Japanese characters. We have three different kinds - Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, (Chinese characters). Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic characters, meaning one character corresponds to one sound. Hiragana and Katakana have 48 characters each, which are created by the combination of 5 singular vowels and 9 consonants. Both Hiragana and Katakana were developed from Chinese characters that the ancient Japanese used to use to write. Hiragana was first used for unofficial documents, and people used Katakana and Kanji for official documents. These days, we mainly use Katakana for foreign words, and Hiragana for Japanese words that we don't use Kanji for.

Hiragana Chart:

Katakana Chart:

Blue arrows and numbers are the order to write a character. You must follow the order to write properly all Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.

Japanese students learn all Hiragana and Katakana during kindergarten and the 1st grade. They start learning Kanji, which has more strokes and more complicated forms, from the 1st grade. Students learn about 1,000 kanji by the end of 6th grade, and another 1,000 kanji by the end of 9th grade. There are more than 2,000 kanji that the Japanese use, but these 2,000 kanji are the basic. Therefore you must know them all.

The diagram on the top shows how Hiragana "ka" was formed from a kanji character. The diagram on the bottom shows how Katakana "i" was formed from a kanji character.

Phew. Today's topic was a bit too serious and complicated, so I'll talk about something more fun tomorrow. Stay tuned.