Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana and Japanese Writing

Japanese language system comprises of 3 different styles, that is, Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragara. In other words, Japanese is written with a mix of these 3 characters.

Kanji characters in Japanese were imported from China. "Kan" means Chinese while "ji' means character. There are about 6 thousands of Chinese-based characters used in daily life. About 1850 Kanji characters are required to remember by eighth grade students. A college graduate usually knows about 4000 Kanji characters.

Before the 4th century AD, the Japanese had no writing system. During the 4th century Chinese characters were imported and adapted in writing Japanese. Over time a writing system emerged in which Chinese characters were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used for their phonetic values to write grammatical elements and these characters were simplified and eventually became two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana.

In translation of foreign names such as people's names, city names, country names, etc. usually katakana characters are used.