Japanese Characters

Japanese is written with three scripts at once. Kanji (漢字), characters borrowed from Chinese, carry the meaning of most nouns and verb stems; hiragana (ひらがな) writes grammar endings, particles and native words without a common kanji; katakana (カタカナ) writes foreign words, foreign names, sound effects and emphasis. One ordinary sentence uses all three: 私はコーヒーを飲みます 'I drink coffee' has the kanji 私 and 飲, the hiragana は, を and みます, and the katakana コーヒー.

So there is no Japanese 'alphabet A to Z'. Hiragana and katakana are syllabaries: each basic kana usually represents one mora (sound unit), such as か ka or ト to, and each set has 46 basic signs. Kanji are open-ended; the official jōyō list of characters for everyday use has 2,136, which students learn by the end of secondary school, and newspapers keep mostly to them. Latin letters, called rōmaji, are a fourth layer used for transcription, signs and typing: Tōkyō, Ōsaka.

Both kana sets grew out of Chinese characters: hiragana from flowing cursive forms (あ from 安), katakana from pieces of characters (ア from part of 阿). Almost every kana has a hiragana and a katakana twin with the same sound, so the symbol grid above lists them in the same order. Text can run left to right in lines or, as in novels, newspapers and manga, top to bottom in columns read from right to left.

Hiragana and katakana chart: the gojūon order

Kana are sorted in the gojūon ('fifty sounds') order, the order of Japanese dictionaries: the vowels あ い う え お (a i u e o), then the same five vowels after k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r and w, ending with ん n. A few cells sound irregular: し shi, ち chi, つ tsu, ふ fu. The y and w rows are short, and を (wo) is used only as the object particle and said o. Two particles are also read differently from their kana: は is said wa as the topic marker (こんにちは konnichiwa) and へ is said e as 'towards'.

Two small marks extend the chart. The dakuten ゛ voices a consonant: か ka → が ga, さ sa → ざ za, た ta → だ da, は ha → ば ba. The handakuten ゜ turns h into p: は → ぱ pa, ひ → ぴ pi. ぢ and づ sound like じ and ず and appear mainly where a word joins another, as in はなぢ hanaji 'nosebleed' and つづく tsuzuku 'to continue'.

Smaller kana change the kana around them. Small ゃ ゅ ょ fuse with the kana before them into one syllable: きゃ kya, しゅ shu, ちょ cho, while full-size きや is ki-ya. Small っ doubles the next consonant: きって kitte is a postage stamp, きて kite means 'come'. Katakana add small vowels for sounds Japanese did not have: ファ fa, ティ ti, ウィ wi, フォ fo, and ヴ for v, as in ヴァイオリン beside the more common バイオリン violin.

Katakana write long vowels with the bar ー: コーヒー kōhī coffee, ラーメン rāmen; in vertical text the bar turns upright. Hiragana normally spell a long vowel out (おかあさん okāsan 'mother'), though casual writing borrows the bar too: すごーい. The old kana ゐ wi and ゑ we were dropped in the 1946 spelling reform and live on in brand names: ニッカウヰスキー Nikka Whisky and ヱビス Yebisu beer.

Kanji, 々 and the most useful characters to copy

Most kanji have two kinds of reading: a native Japanese one and one borrowed from Chinese. 日 is hi 'sun, day' on its own but nichi or ni in 日本 Nihon 'Japan' and 日本語 nihongo 'the Japanese language'; 人 is hito 'person' but jin in 日本人 nihonjin 'Japanese person'. Small kana written above a kanji, called furigana, show its reading to children and learners.

The mark 々 repeats the kanji before it: 人々 hitobito 'people', 時々 tokidoki 'sometimes', 日々 hibi 'day after day'. It is not a kanji itself and has no reading of its own. The rarer ゝ ゞ (hiragana) and ヽ ヾ (katakana) repeat a kana, with ゞ and ヾ adding the dakuten; they survive in names such as いすゞ Isuzu.

The days of the week are the seven old 'luminaries': 日 月 火 水 木 金 土 sun, moon, fire, water, wood, metal and earth, so 月曜日 getsuyōbi is Monday and 金曜日 kin'yōbi Friday. Kanji numerals 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 are still used in dates, prices and vertical text, and Japanese counts large numbers by ten thousands: 万 man is 10,000 and 億 oku is 100,000,000. Characters people often look up for their meaning, such as 愛 love, 心 heart, 夢 dream, 力 strength and 和 harmony, are in the grid too; the Japan collection has more.

Japanese punctuation marks and quotation marks 「」

The Japanese full stop is a small circle 。 (kuten) and the comma a slanted tick 、 (tōten). Both are full-width, taking the space of a whole character, like every Japanese punctuation mark; Japanese also puts no spaces between words. Formal writing traditionally ended questions with 。 after the question particle か, but ？ and ！ are now common, especially in casual text.

Quotations go in corner brackets 「 」 (kagikakko): 「こんにちは」と言った 'he said, “Hello”'. Quotes inside quotes and the titles of books and films take the double corner brackets 『 』: 『千と千尋の神隠し』 Spirited Away. Black lenticular brackets 【 】 highlight labels in headlines, shop listings and video titles: 【速報】 'breaking news'.

The middle dot ・ (nakaguro) separates foreign names and listed words: マイケル・ジャクソン Michael Jackson. The wave dash 〜 marks ranges (10時〜18時, 10:00 to 18:00) and a drawn-out, playful tone (よろしく〜). The ※ (kome-jirushi, 'rice mark') flags a note, 〒 stands before a postal code (〒100-0001), and 〆 is written across the flap of a sealed envelope. Vertical text has its own rotated versions of the brackets; fonts swap them in automatically.

How to type Japanese on a keyboard, Mac and phone

Windows: Settings, Time & language, Language & region, Add a language, Japanese. Switch with Windows + Space, then turn kana input on and off with Alt + ` (the key left of 1) or the 半角/全角 key. Type in rōmaji: nihongo appears as にほんご, Space converts it to 日本語 and offers other kanji, Enter accepts. F7 turns the input into full-width katakana and F6 back to hiragana.

Mac: System Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources, Edit, +, Japanese, Romaji; switch with Control + Space or the Globe key. Control + K turns the input into katakana and Control + J into hiragana. On both systems the input method spells the tricky kana for you: nn gives ん, a doubled consonant gives っ (kitte → きって), wo gives を, and an x or l in front gives a small kana (xa → ぁ, ltu → っ).

Punctuation comes from the normal keys while Japanese input is on: . gives 。, , gives 、, [ and ] give 「 and 」, / gives ・, - gives ー and ~ gives 〜. To get ¥, 〒 or ※, type en, yuubin or kome and convert. Phones: add the Japanese keyboard (iPhone: Settings, General, Keyboard; Android Gboard: Languages) and choose Romaji, which works like a computer, or Kana, the 12-key pad most Japanese use, where you tap a key for a row and flick up, down, left or right for its vowels.

Where Japanese is spoken

Japanese has about 120 million speakers by CLDR's estimate, almost all of them in Japan 🇯🇵, where it is the language of government, school and daily life, although no law names it the official language. Japan pays in yen: ¥ in Latin text and 円 (en) in Japanese, as in 1,000円. See the Japan collection for the flag, food and seasonal emoji.

Emigration from the late 19th century built communities abroad. Brazil 🇧🇷 has the largest population of Japanese descent outside Japan, estimated at about 2.7 million, though CLDR estimates only around 460,000 Japanese speakers there, since most younger Japanese Brazilians speak Portuguese. Other communities include Hawaii and California in the United States 🇺🇸, with an estimated 455,000 Japanese speakers (2020), Canada 🇨🇦 with around 100,000 by CLDR's estimate, and Peru.

Japanese belongs to the small Japonic family together with the Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa, such as Central Okinawan. It is not related to Chinese, although it borrowed Chinese characters and thousands of words; Korean resembles it in grammar and word order, but most linguists do not count the two as related. See the Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean collections for their writing.