-The Japanese Alphabet–
There are three types of Japanese alphabet:
1. Hiragana – traditional Japanese characters
2. Katakana – used for foreign words or sound effects
3. Kanji – traditional Chinese characters
There are 46 characters for hiragana and katakana, and about 1,800 kanji that are commonly used.
Start by learning hiragana and then katakana. Many words written in katakana are originally taken from English, German or French.
Do you know what these English words are?
スタート
ストップ
ボタン
ジャンプ
ライト
コーヒー
パーティ
All Japanese script can also be written with Roman letters. This is called romaji. The katakana words above are written in romaji as follows.
sutaato
sutoppu
botan
jyampu
raito
koohii
paati
Learn hiragana and katakana first, so that every time you see Japanese, you can test and improve your ability!