Kanji- Japan spent much of its early history without written word, until the Chinese came. Kanji consists of thousands of characters that are, to put it bluntly, extremely confusing. A single kanji character is derived from a picture, but over time you can`t really see any kind of picture in most of the kanji. Also, kanji is usually a combination of a bunch of symbols, so you begin to see common symbols in various kanji. Kanji is one of the reasons that the Japanese are such an isolated culture, because it is so hard to read their language. It takes years to learn all the kanji, and still my friends in school don`t even know all of them.

 

Hiragana- This is basically the Japanese version of the alphabet. All japanese sounds end in vowels, except for the "N" sound. The characters are much simpler than kanji, but hiragana is rarely used in writing, except for particles (in, at, to, is, and...etc). When e-mailing my friends, they don`t understand me, because they have to use kanji. There are many words in the Japanese language that have many meanings. In speech, you can figure out what someone is talking about, but in writing different kanji distinguish the different meanings in words. For instance, hana means both nose and flower, and in some circumstances girl. So you see, hiragana is basically worthless, once you get past the fundamentals of Japanese language.

 

Katakana- This set of characters has the same pronunciations as the hiragana alphabet, but it`s characters are different, and they are used to symbolize foreign words. We all know that the Japanese have troubles with their L`s and R`s, so foreign words are always very funny to read from katakana. Sometimes I don`t even understand the words because the pronunciation is so different.

 

English- I just bring this set of characters up, because the Japanese are very good at butchering foreign languages. I have mentioned before that I have read some very funny English phrases, on various shirts and signs, and so on (see tidbits section). Mix these funny phrases, with the fact that the Japanese have the worst accent on the planet, and it makes for some funny moments. Not to say it`s their fault that they can`t deal with some of the consonant sound of the English alphabet, but it is very hard to keep from laughing, when the R is omitted from most english words. Maybe the only thing funnier than the Japanese trying English, is their French. Since I have come to Japan, my French fluency level has dropped significantly, but I can still read the very poor French on some food packages and so on. Just today I was in a depaaaato (department store), when I saw some French. It said, translated, "a day for a bag," if someone would care to explain that one to me, I would greatly appreciate it.