One thing that caught me somewhat off guard in our most recent trip to Japan was the frequent use of the roman alphabet throughout the country. By this I mean the alphabet you are reading now, called romaji (ローマ字) in Japanese. Nearly all location names on road signs, as well as on signs in places… Read More »
In Japanese, there are three alphabets used together, and each has it’s own set of uses. Let’s go over each of them briefly before we talk about how this trio impacts the language. Hiragana: This alphabet is the most basic and is the first alphabet that Japanese children learn. Any word can be written with… Read More »
One of the misconceptions I had before I got deep into Japanese study was that Japanese kanji are ‘pictographic’, meaning that each character represents some type of picture that is visually similar to a real object. This is true to a certain extent, especially with some of the very simple characters. For example: Tree: 木… Read More »