Writing System

Modern Japanese uses four different scripts:

· Kanji are Chinese characters adapted to write Japanese, used to write:

o nouns;

o stems of adjectives and verbs;

o Japanese names.

· Hiragana are a syllabary, used to write:

o inflectional endings for adjectives and verbs (okurigana);

o grammatical particles (joshi);

o Japanese words with no kanji, or where the author didn't know the kanji, or where the kanji is likely to be unknown to the intended readership;

o indications of how to read kanji (furigana).

· Katakana are another syllabary, used to write:

o emphasized words, like italics in English text;

o words and names from foreign languages;

o onomatopoeia.

· Romaji are Roman characters, used to write:

o numbers;

o international units of measurement;

o acronyms and initialisms.