hiragana ひらがな katakana カタカナ kanji 漢字

хотел разъяснить в первую очередь для себя, а, кроме того, потренировать английский:

historically, japan took the 'alphabet' from china. it was a set of hieroglyphs (thousands of them). it became a skeleton of japanese writing system, and it's called now 'kanji'. however, for that time japan had a spoken language already - of course! it created some inconsistency. because, say, it was one thing, that was described by one kanji, but was pronounced (and read) in 2 different ways - chinese and japanese.

say, the word 'mountain'. chinese has the symbol 山, that means 'mountain'. and chinese call a mountain 'san'. japanese call a mountain 'yama'.

besides, first, japanese had a number of words, that weren't in chinese, and they didn't have appropriate kanji. second, chinese and japanese grammars are quite different. all word changes (verb conjugation, for example) couldn't be reflected adequately with kanji. in this case japanese used chinese characters, that were pronounced as appropriate japanese syllables, and wrote their words with them.

i should say, that japanese is a syllabic language. japanese people don't speak by sounds, they speak by syllables (from our, western people, prospective). there are 46 basic syllables in the japanese language (and 104 in total with derivatives).

so, chinese has a symbol 見, that means 'see', 'look', etc. and is read 'jian'. japanese has an appropriate word 'mi', that means the same. but it may change in different context: 'to see' -> 'miru', 'saw' -> 'mita', etc. japanese resolved this problem, taking the character見 and adding other characters from chinese, that are pronounced as 'ru' and 'ta'.

it created a pretty bulky writing system - some japanese words might contain 2-3-4 chinese characters, that might consist of dozens of strokes. and only a small part of japanese people could read and write. in time the kanji, that were used as syllables, became simplier - it's understood, because they had been used most often.

for example, the chinese symbol 呂 (that is pronounced as kind of 'ro'/'lo') has transformed to ろ.

for each japanese syllable such a simplified character has been created. so there hiragana has appeared. its characters are characterized by smooth and rounded lines. opposite to hiragana katakana was being created - its characters were formed by removing extra strokes from the original hieroglyphs.

say, the same chinese 呂 became ロ.

after one of writing reforms katakana started to be used for foreigner words - the words that came to japanese from other languages - mostly from english. when foreigner words come to japanese, they used to transform, accordingly the japanese syllable system.

say, english 'table' (ou français 'table') is transformed to 'ta-aburu' or ターブル (in katakana).

thus there are 3 'alphabets' in japanese language. any japanese word can be written with 2 of them (katakana or hiragana), and most of them can be written with all 3 of them.

say, the word 'yama' (mountain) can be written: 山 (kanji), やま (hiragana), ヤマ (katakana).

and it created even more mess:
1. most of native japanese words are written kanji.
2. word ending and changeable parts are written higarana (you may use hiragana also, when you forget an appropriate kanji ;)).
3. foreigner words and some other ones (animal and plant names) are written katakana.
4. and they are all mixed together:
'i bought a tv' will be written as: 私はテレビを買った。
私 - watashi (kanji) - i
は - wa (hiragana) - particle
テレビ - terebi (katakana) - tv
を - wo (hiragana) - particle
買 - ka (kanji) - buy
った - tta (hiragana) - past tense ending
。- .

dual nature of japanese writing system created 2 ways of kanji (originally chinese characters) reading: kun'yomi and on'yomi.

1. when the kanji means a word, that is present equally in chinese and japanese, kun'yomi used. kun'yomi means - japanese reading.
chinese character 山 means 'mountain' and has an appropriate word in japanese - 'yama'. i.e. when山 means 'mountain', it's pronounced as 'yama'.

2. when the kanji is a part of a japanese word, it's pronounced in the chinese way - on'yomi. as i said, chinese hieroglyphs were used to form japanese words, that hadn't exact meaning in the chinese 'alphabet'.
山水 - landscape. pronounced - 'sansui';
山 - pronounced 'san' in chinese and means 'mountain';
水 - pronounced 'sui' in chinese and means 'water'.

but be careful: it won't work always. for example,
山人 - mountain people, pronounced as 'yamabito', i.e. kun'yomi used here, though 山 is a part of word.