In summary, you need to understand how Japanese words are formed with hiragana, katakana and kanji, how they are combined to form Japanese sentences, before you can understand what words translate from Japanese to English.
The verb 食べました (tabemashita) contains the kanji 食 (shoku), you will know that it's referring to eating. The kanji 昨日 (kinou) let you know it's referring to yesterday instantly. Meaning: I have a meal with a friend from America yesterday.įrom the above sentence, you will know that the katakana アメリカ means America and will not mix up with the particle から (kara) that follow it. Kinou wa amerika kara no tomodachi to gohan wo tabemashita By looking at the kanji, you instantly know which Japanese word the sentence is referring to, and this saves you a lot of time. If you make use of kanji and katakana, the whole sentence becomes shorter (since one kanji can represent a few hiragana), thus making it easier for you to understand the content. Moreover, you may mix up the particles and other Japanese words.
It will make you wonder which word the sentence is referring to without looking into the context.įor example, the following sentence is written totally in hiragana.Īlthough it's still possible to understand the sentence after reading it carefully, you will find it difficult to figure out which few of the hiragana formed a word without reading a few times. That is because there are many Japanese words which have the same pronunciation but totally different meanings. I think kanji let Japanese sentence becomes more readable as the whole sentence become shorter and clearer.Īlthough it's possible to write the whole sentence in hiragana, it'll become lengthy and very difficult to comprehend. Some kanji can be represented by one hiragana while other kanji can be represented by two, three or even four hiragana. Katakana is mainly used to express foreign words, foreign names, foreign countries and things that "loaned" from foreign languages.Ĭharacters. Hiragana is normally used for the grammar, the connection between words, the particles, etc. You can then see how different combinations of Japanese words are formed.Ī typical Japanese sentence is formed by using 3 sets of characters: hiragana, katakana and kanji. Take a look at this page where there are many Japanese words and vocabulary available. However, if you don't know how to form words using the abc, they're useless. It's just like you only know all the English alphabet. You need to know how Japanese words are formed with the combination of few hiragana, how foreign words are borrowed to form words using katakana, how hiragana is used as particle in a sentence, etc. However, knowing every hiragana and katakana are not enough. I assume that you are referring to hiragana and katakana. You mentioned that you understood every single letter and symbol (except for kanji). I will also try to reply your question in your perspective. I think someone asked a similar question and I have answered it over here. I guess all together I'm asking how exactly do you go from japanese letters to words. Like for example If I wrote a bunch of letters in japanese how exactly would I know what those words translate out to be just by looking at the symbols and letters thanks :DĪlso, if I wrote a lot of japanese letters into sentences how would I know what words translated into what? Now the part I'm stuck on is how exactly do people know what japanese letters translate to what words so I know how to write the letters and symbols.īut if you asked someone what do certain words translate out to be how exactly did that person get the words he did?