So I've noticed that japanese words don't look like they're made of the letters. Are they… - Feed Post by Vsirket
So I've noticed that japanese words don't look like they're made of the letters. Are they completely new symbols instead of combinations of symbols?
posted by Vsirket
Comments 1
The Japanese writing system is comprised of three main written scripts: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.
Hiragana is the main phonetic writing system used to represent every distinct sound in Japanese. Katakana represents the same sounds as Hiragana, it is mainly used to represent words imported from other languages. Kanji, which are Chinese characters adapted for Japanese, are heavily used in writing. There are no spaces in Japanese so Kanji is necessary in order to separate the words within a sentence. Kanji is also useful for distinguishing homophones, which occurs quite often given the limited number of distinct sounds in Japanese.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete/writing
