How do you write a-z in kanji?

Answer 1

There is no A-Z alphabet in Japanese.

Their "alphabet" is syllabic, so it's each vowel (a-i-u-e-o) and then consonants with the vowel.

For example:

There are: a i u e o

Then there's: ka ki ku ke ko

Then there's: sa shi su se so

And then the: ta chi tsu te to

And so on...

BUT, there are 3 ways to write the Japanese language.

Well, there are 4, but that's if you include using Roman letters to write Japanese.

The first two methods are Katakana and Hiragana.

They are merely syllabic characters, so they don't mean anything individually.

They are used for spelling only.

The first method is Katakana.

That's used almost exclusively for foreign words, but it can also be used to emphasize a certain word, or sometimes even for aesthetic purposes.

The syllabic set I posted above (in Katakana) is:

カ キ ク ケ コ (ka ki ku ke ko)

サ シ ス セ ソ (sa shi su se so)

タ チ ツ テ ト (ta chi tsu te to)

(Keep in mind that there are a lot more, but I'm not posting them all.)

Then there's Hiragana, which is used for Japanese words.

It is possible for one to write everything in Japanese with Hiragana, but the Japanese also have to learn Kanji, which I'll get to.

The same set above (in Hiragana) is:

か き く け こ (ka ki ku ke ko)

さ し す せ そ (sa shi su se so)

た ち つ て と (ta chi tsu te to)

Now KANJI, however, is a lot more complex.

Because Kanji is used to express whole words or ideas, not just a sound.

Also, Kanji uses Chinese characters, so writing them is much more complicated than the average 2 strokes it takes to write Katakana and Hiragana.

Another little "complication" of Kanji, is that there are multiple ways to pronounce each character.

There's the Chinese based pronunciation, and then there's the original Japanese pronunciation of the word, which they attached to the Chinese character. There are also variations that occurred to accommodate certain words.

So, there is no syllabic alphabet for Kanji.

In fact, there are over 10,000 of them.

There are simple ones like: "一" which means "one" (ichi)

Then there are much more complicated ones like: "静" which means "quiet" (shizu)

So, the best thing would be to either take a class, or if you're planning on teaching yourself, then find yourself some good CD's, books (even music and TV shows) so you can practice both the writing, pronunciation and word usage.

It'll take a lot of memorization.

So, good luck.

Or better yet...頑張って

;^]