Understanding the Japanese Writing System

Japanese writing uses not only one—but three different scripts! At the same time! Why? And how does this work? In this video you’ll get to familiarize yourself with kanji, hiragana and katakana, and learn how they interact with each other to create the unique synthesis of written Japanese. If you don't have any previous knowledge of Japanese writing, this is a good place to start!

Note that this video focuses on how the three scripts are used*, and how they relate to each other. It does *not present the various characters from each script, or explain how the scripts function on a deeper systematic level.

NOTES
• For answers to frequent comments, please see the pinned comment below.

ERRATA
• At 2:02, the characters ほ / ホ are incorrectly given as 'ha'. They really represent 'ho'. 'Ha' is represented by は / ハ.
• At 5:04, the kanji is wrong. The kanji for 'muda' is 無駄, and not 鮫 (which is the kanji for 'same', used previously).
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The study mentioned in the video is « Chikamatsu et al. 2000. A Japanese logographic character frequency list for cognitive science research. Behavior Research Methods, vol. 32 (3), pp. 482–500. »
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:40 Introducing the scripts
03:11 When are kanji used?
03:48 When are hiragana used?
04:22 When are katakana used?
05:17 Frequency of the different scripts
06:36 How it all goes together
10:51 Conclusion
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