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According to the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Institute (FSI), Japanese is one of five Category IV languages, meaning that it is one of the most difficult for English speakers to learn due to a plethora of linguistic and cultural differences. Many learners of the language, whether formally educated or self-taught, will attest to this if asked. But what makes Japanese so difficult for Anglophones and other Western language speakers? A variety of reasons could be cited for this, from the large disparity in formal and informal speech, to the “backwards” grammar, to the existence of a tone-adjacent pitch accent, but the most common in many circles is the fact that Japanese has three alphabets—or, at least, so the complaint goes. The truth is a little bit different and a lot more interesting.
The English language derives from the Latin alphabet, consisting of 26 letters that can be arranged in numerous ways to create the words and messages of everyday life. Despite it being relatively common knowledge, many people do not know the technical definition of an alphabet; an alphabet is a system of writing (known as a script or orthography) wherein each symbol (known in this case as a letter) corresponds to a basic sound recognized by speakers of the language. For example, the letter K represents a sound that could be written as “kuh.” This sound, and others like it, are known as phonemes, comprising the smallest spoken units of the English language.
Conversely, some languages forego the emphasis on phonemes for one on syllables or the less ubiquitous morae, which are commonly defined as a phonological unit of syllable weight; in other words, they are sounds not necessarily classified as syllables but receiving the same amount of emphasis or duration of pronunciation in speech regardless, even if a purely syllabic language would not bother to distinguish them. The writing systems of such languages are not known as alphabets but rather syllabaries, with each symbol or character representing one of the recognized syllables or morae as opposed to a phoneme.
In contrast to both alphabets and syllabaries, logographic scripts have symbols or characters that largely represent morphemes as opposed to sounds. Morphemes are the smallest possible combinations of phonemes that still carry meaning, such as the prefix “mis-,” the base “give,” and the suffixes “-ing” and “-s” in the word “misgivings.”
These are far from the only types of scripts, but they are the only ones necessary to understand the three alphabets of Japanese—or, rather, the two syllabaries and one logographic script.
The origin of spoken Japanese is heavily debated and shrouded in mystery, but, according to linguist Roy Andrew Miller’s Origins of the Japanese Language, written Japanese can be traced all the way back to the late 5th century C.E. in the form of name inscriptions; still, it would be well over a century before “substantial” literary works began to pop up in the 700s. While there are whispers regarding an indigenous Japanese script known as jindai moji (神代文字, or age of gods script), most scholars agree that this is likely a rumor based upon modern forgeries; in fact, evidence shows that it is unlikely there was a writing system in ancient Japan at all. This, however, did not stop them from adopting one.
As the Smithsonian explains, China is home to one of the earliest known examples of writing systems in the world, alongside Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica. The earliest Chinese characters were largely pictographs, a form of orthography more akin to drawings than letters, since they convey meaning through their visual similarity to objects or the representations of ideas. These pictographs constituted a script known as jiaguwen (甲骨文, oracle bone script), found carved into bones and turtle shells and used for divination during the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600–1050 B.C.E.). Chinese writing continued to change and evolve for the next few centuries, before finally being standardized during the Qin Dynasty (ca. 221–207 B.C.E.) by Prime Minister Li Si. Although this still did not mark the end of evolution in Chinese orthography, it did mark a shift in it, unifying China culturally and setting the stage for more standardized orthography further down the line. The standardized characters of post-Qin China would find their way to Japan.
Interaction between China and Japan dates back as early as the first century C.E., evidenced by the King of Na gold seal given by Han Emperor Guangwu to a Yamato emissary in the year 57. As trade between the two cultures increased, often through Korean intermediaries, Japan would end up with a wide variety of Chinese imports such as official seals, letters, inkstones, coins, fans, mirrors, and other decorative items with Chinese characters, or hanzi (traditional Chinese: 漢字; simplified Chinese: 汉字), on them. Eventually, the Japanese would take hanzi and make them their own, keeping some the same but simplifying or modifying others. These Japanese hanzi—along with some kokuji (国字, lit. national characters), characters invented in Japan—would become known as kanji (漢字 in kanji, using the same characters as hanzi in traditional Chinese). Although some are archaic or obsolete, there are approximately 50,000 kanji in the Japanese language, and 2,136 jōyō kanji (常用漢字), kanji required for baseline fluency as per the official Japanese Ministry of Education list. Each kanji has at least two pronunciations: a Chinese one, known as an on’yomi (音読み), and a Japanese one, known as a kun’yomi (訓読み). Some common kanji, however, have multiple on’yomi or kun’yomi and, on top of this, can take on different, sometimes even unrelated, pronunciations when paired with other kanji as a compound word. Despite their apparent difficulty, kanji comprise a large portion of the Japanese language, with the majority of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, in most cases) being written in kanji in base form.
Before the previously described kanji system was implemented, when Japanese orthography was still in its infancy, many Japanese used man’yōgana (万葉仮名, lit. 10,000 leaf kana), an early attempt at a syllabary wherein they would represent Japanese morae with hanzi of similar pronunciation regardless of meaning. While man’yōgana was gradually phased out of use (despite some words known as ateji [当て字] still using kanji assigned to them based upon their phonetic properties), it nevertheless shaped modern Japanese in profound ways. Throughout the 9th century, Buddhist monks simplified several kanji, often through the isolation of specific elements within them. This form of simplified kanji came to be known as katakana (kanji: 片仮名; katakana: カタカナ), a syllabary comprised of 46 basic characters and two diacritics, or marks that alter pronunciation. In contrast to kanji, katakana are akin to italics, being primarily used for foreign loan words, onomatopoeia, scientific names, slang, and emphasis.
There is one final key to the Japanese orthography puzzle. At the same time that kanji was being simplified via element isolation, there was also a form of simplification through cursivisation, resulting in another syllabary. Often, both elite men and women would study simplified, cursive kanji, but the latter would not be allowed higher education covering traditional kanji, so, in time, this script became known as onnade (女手), literally, “women’s hand.” Eventually, however, this writing system would evolve into what is known today as hiragana (kanji: 平仮名; hiragana: ひらがな), with 46 basic characters and two diacritics just like katakana. Today, hiragana are primarily used for grammatical purposes, such as particles and suffixes, as well as words without base kanji forms and furigana (振り仮名), or pronunciation notes for certain kanji.
It is worth noting that the 46 characters and two diacritics of katakana and hiragana are relatively recent developments. Historically, both scripts had multiple variant forms of their characters, with this being a prominent issue regarding hiragana specifically, to the extent that there is a term for now defunct hiragana variations: hentaigana (変体仮名). As far back as the 11th century, many Japanese were aware of the existence of a problem with the language’s inconsistent orthography, and the desire for and attempts at standardization became particularly pronounced during the Westernization movements of the Meiji Era (1868-1912). Still, it would not be until the post-WWII American occupation and Westernization that the government officially standardized kana.
All in all, while the complexity of the Japanese language is undeniable, especially for a speaker of a Western language, so too is the beauty. Between the rich history, beautiful calligraphy, booming technology, and sweeping pop culture, there are a wide variety of reasons to learn Japanese despite the challenges it entails; in fact, the challenges are part of what make it such a unique and rewarding experience—and many Japanese learners would attest to this too, if asked.