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The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis.
Writing systems are used to record human language, and may be classified according to certain common features. The usual name of the script is given first; the name of the languages in which the script is written follows (in brackets), particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name. Other informative or qualifying ...
Kanji (漢字, pronounced ⓘ) are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese. [1] They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of hiragana and katakana.
Hiragana developed from man'yōgana, Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, a practice that started in the 5th century. [21] The oldest examples of Man'yōgana include the Inariyama Sword, an iron sword excavated at the Inariyama Kofun. This sword is thought to be made in the year 辛亥年 (most commonly taken to be C.E. 471). [22]
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. [5] For example, "ice cream" is written アイスクリーム (aisukurīmu). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and foreign ...
Vertical writing (tategaki 縦書き) is still commonly used in Japan in novels, newspapers and magazines, including most Japanese comics and graphic novels (also known as manga), while horizontal writing is used more often in other media, especially those containing English language references. In general, dialogue in manga is written vertically.
In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana [2] and katakana. It can also refer to their ancestor magana (真仮名, lit. 'true kana'), [3] which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. man'yōgana); and hentaigana, which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana.
Although Kunrei-shiki romanization is the style favored by the Japanese government, Hepburn remains the most popular method of Japanese romanization. It is learned by most foreign students of the language, and is used within Japan for romanizing personal names, locations, and other information, such as train tables and road signs.