Japanese Language Alphabets

With one or two minor exceptions each different sound in the japanese language that is each different syllable strictly each mora corresponds to one character in each syllabary.

Japanese language alphabets. In modern japanese the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters or 71 including diacritics. Japanese has two phonetic alphabets which were invented to better fit the japanese language instead of depending on the chinese characters kanji alone. Like korean the japanese alphabet is silabic with the exception of the n.

Small ゃ ゅ and ょ follows after letters in the second column and are used to transcribe contracted sounds. Hiragana katakana and kanji. There are 48 katakana symbols that have similar sounds to hiragana. The japanese alphabet consists of two phonetic alphabets.

This is supposed to be a single syllable. Japanese alphabet katakana is also a syllabic alphabet. There are 46 hiragana and katakana characters each and both are used to represent the same sounds. Katakana and hiragana there s also kanji which are chinese characters.

But how can you tell the difference between them. Each character of the phonetic alphabet represents a syllable or sound cluster. In japanese the alphabet is broken into three separate trees. 3 branches 1 system.

Together these three writing methods make up the entirety of the japanese language. They convey meaning only as part of words. It s vital to learn these special characters if you want to learn japanese.