The Japanese Alphabet is followed three main types:

1. Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな)

Hiragana or (ひらがな) in Japanese means “Common syllables” are Japanese characters created using kanji. (Chinese characters) as a basis, has been around since the Heian period, or about 800 AD. In the past, hiragana was a character used mostly by women. But nowadays it is commonly used. It is used in words that do not have kanji. and is also used in auxiliary and suffixes of verbs. It is also a basic character for learning Japanese as well.

There are 46 symbols used for words that are not in the kanji or at the end of a verb or as an auxiliary word and Hiragana is used as a reading word for the kanji. To help readers, which is called Furigana.

General Information:

• Number of characters: There are 46 characters in total.
• Vowel sounds: 5 sounds: あ(a), い(i), う(u), え(e), お(o).
• Special sound: ん(eun) is used as a spelling or sound combination with other consonants.
• A paragraph that does not contain all 5 letters:  The (ya) space has only 3 letters., The (wa) paragraph has only 2 letters.

Note:を(o) is pronounced the same as お(o), but を(o) is used as an auxiliary in Japanese.

2. Katakana (片仮名、カタカナ)

Katakana or (カタカナ) in Japanese dates back to the Heian period, about 800 AD. Katakana ( with Kyoto as its capital) was born about 100 years before Hiragana. Katakana was originally created to shorten kanji or complex Chinese characters. Therefore, katakana is made from part of the kanji itself.

In the old days, katakana was commonly used by men. But nowadays it is commonly used. Used to write the sound of words that come from abroad. including foreign names scientific names as well as onomatopoeia and accent But there are also words that can be used instead of abbreviated kanji. which is rarely found Most of the ones seen are specific names that have been established since the olden days.

There are 46 symbols in the alphabet representing the sounds in one type of Japanese language. Used to write words borrowed from foreign languages. Foreign names and place names in foreign countries and use to write words that mimic sounds in nature and use to write the Japanese names of animals and minerals.

General Information:

• Number of characters: There are 46 characters in total.
• Vowel sounds: 5 sounds: ア(a), イ(i), ウ(u), エ(e), ォ(o).
• Special sound:ン(eun) is used as a spelling or sound combination with other consonants.
• A paragraph that does not contain all 5 letters: The paragraph ャ (ya) has only 3 letters., The paragraph ワ (wa) has only 2 characters.

3. Kanji (漢字)

Kanji (Japanese: “Chinese character”) is the Chinese alphabet used in the Japanese writing system because Kanji is the Chinese character used in Japanese. One kanji can therefore be read in many ways may be up to ten designs or more. Depending on the sentence form and a compound word or word position in that sentence. There are around 50,000 characters in Kanji but only 2,000-3,000 are used in Japan.

In the Japanese writing system, ideograms (or characters) are adapted from Chinese characters. Kanji constitute one of the two systems used to write the Japanese language, the other being the two indigenous kana syllabaries (hiragana and katakana).

Both Hiragana and Katakana have the same 46-letter character but differ in style and usage. If observed from the writing style The hiragana is rounded. Personally, the katakana is square. For example, かわいい VS カワイイ(kawaii), which means cute. Should be not difficult to separate, right?