We all know that the Japanese use a different style of writing than we do, so I'm going to try and explain the history behind the mysterious "kanji" through the way I learned it!
(Please point out if I'm wrong at all)
When I first started learning Japanese, I started to wonder why the Japanese had so many alphabets(three to be exact), and I wasn't comfortable with using it until I understood it more clearly.
Kanji (These "pictographs" you see usually in names of organizations or important documents) has many uses in the modern world. From universal translations to shortening sentences (sometimes elongating).
(Please point out if I'm wrong at all)
When I first started learning Japanese, I started to wonder why the Japanese had so many alphabets(three to be exact), and I wasn't comfortable with using it until I understood it more clearly.
Kanji (These "pictographs" you see usually in names of organizations or important documents) has many uses in the modern world. From universal translations to shortening sentences (sometimes elongating).
Way back when, Japan traveled to China to trade with them. Consequently, they picked up some of their writings and culture, and ended up taking back some of it to Japan. For instance, 金（かね）pronounced as "kah-neh" was used to represent the idea of money, or gold. This Kanji for money/gold can be written in three ways: 1) Hiragana 2) Kanji 3) Katakana(rarely)
HIRAGANA ひらがな
Click here to learn to Read/Write/Speak Hiragana/Katakna.
The Japanese use hiragana mainly for conveying "particles" or grammatical words that serves the only purpose of making the sentence "come alive" and actually make sense. Since we're not japanese, we mainly use hiragana when we don't know the kanji form of the word. かね Kane (Kah-Neh)
KANJI 漢字 かんじ
2) Kanji is used, as described earlier, to shorten, or to make their medium universal. There's no real reason other than these that the Japanese use kanji in their writing, but if you look at your own culture, and you're one of those kids who asks the teacher, "Why do we have to learn new vocab?! I can have a descent conversation with the words I already know!", then it's kind of like that. The Japanese learn kanji to increase their level of intellect, and to expand their vocabulary at times in different languages (Chinese/Korean etc). There are many dialects within China, each with their own distinct sounds. Kanji remains universal to all dialects.
KATAKANA カタカナ
Katakana is almost exclusively used for foreign words like, "Bo-ru"(Boh-Roo) = ボール＝ Ball. Japanese, essentially, is a language taken from other languages. It has elements in its grammar/vocabulary/writing style from many different languages. In a more confusing situation, katakana is also used in random situations (yeah you heard me right). We also use it to write foreign names in Japanese.
Onomatopoeia
In addition to foreign words, katakana is also commonly used to write onomatopoetic words, that is to say words that describe a sound. For example if you want to write "woof woof" (dog bark), you write it in katakana: ワンワン=wanwan.
Also, the names of plants and animals are usually written in katakana (or hiragana), even though most have a kanji version as well.
Conclusion
And about learning kanji... I've seen many people complain about it and being like "why on Earth do they use kanji, why don't they just write with the same alphabet we do? D: " but actually in my opinion kanji is far better for written Japanese because of the Japanese language's vocabulary. Japanese has many words that can mean different things, for example "kami" can mean 1. paper, 2. god, or 3. hair. In speech you'll get the meaning of the word from the context or the word's syllables might be "stressed" differently depending on which meaning the speaker is using the word in. However, in written Japanese you obviously can't know the stresses and also the context might be hazier, so isn't it great that all of these different meanings of a word are written with a different kanji, despite that they are pronounced the same way? In "kami"'s case, that would be paper=, god=, and hair=. This way there's no fear of a mix-up and if you just know the kanjis, I think it makes the text a lot faster to follow than if it were written only in (for example) hiragana.
Sent in by Awatemono
Edited by Sunwooz
