What is katakana used for?

In modern Japanese, katakana is most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages or loanwords (other than words historically imported from Chinese), called gairaigo. For example, “television” is written テレビ (terebi).

Are Hanzi and kanji the same?

Hanzi are introduced in Japan as Chinese writing. Japanese people adopt hanzi to write their own language: kanji. Japanese people add to and alter meanings of some kanji. Japanese people invent some kanji of their own.

Why is kanji used?

Kanji are used for writing nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. For grammatical endings and words without corresponding kanji, two additional, syllable-based scripts are being used, hiragana and katakana, each consisting of 46 syllables. Calligraphy is the art of writing beautifully.

Why does Japanese have 3 alphabets?

The reason goes back, again, to the fact that reading kanji is difficult – and not just for non-Japanese people and women. These katakana characters were a simplified version of the kanji symbols themselves, and were pronounced in the same way. Over time these characters were standardized into an alphabet.

Is Chinese harder than Japanese?

Other varieties of Chinese share many characteristics with Mandarin, though have different pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. So for English speakers, Chinese is easier than Japanese from this aspect. Chinese grammar is generally considered a lot easier to learn than Japanese.

Can Japanese people read Chinese?

And Japanese can read a Chinese text, but Chinese, unless they know kanas (and even that may not help them so much, because they should also have some smatterings of Japanese grammar articulations) will have no doubt a harder time …

Can Japanese speak without kanji?

The short answer is: yes, you can speak fluent Japanese and understand Japanese people without ever studying a single kanji. Even if you become very fluent in spoken Japanese, you will make certain small mistakes and lack certain pieces of knowledge if you don’t know any kanji at all.