Japanese Language Basics
The Japanese writing system is a complex system of interconnected parts. There are two phonetic syllabaries called kana which are used to represent syllable sounds, and there are Chinese characters used to represent meaning which in Japanese are called kanji.
Hiragana
Hiragana is used to form the grammar. Particles and conjugations of verbs are written in hiragana and you can think of it as the main “alphabet” in the language. Technically speaking, we should refer to hiragana as a syllabary since each character represents a defined syllable, the pronunciation of which will not change regardless of order or position in the sentence. This is unlike English where the pronunciation of “s” differs between “sun” and “shine”, for example. There are 46 base syllables.
Katakana
Katakana is today used to write words borrowed from other languages, e.g. cake, meeting, business, hot dog, computer, etc. In many cases these words do exist in Japanese but it is by no means uncommon for Japanese speakers to deliberately use the English word (with the Japanese pronunciation) instead. These foreign words sometimes undergo their own transitions within the Japanese language, pushed, pulled, and abbreviated until they are no longer recognisable.
Starbucks ⇒ sutābakusu ⇒ sutaba
Reschedule ⇒ risukejuru ⇒ resuke
Each syllable in hiragana has a one-to-one relationship with katakana, and vice versa. Hiragana and katakana are simply two different ways of writing the same syllable. You can think of them as like uppercase and lowercase letters in English: “APPLE” and “apple” would look like entirely different words to an alien, but for us they have exactly the same meaning and pronunciation.
Kanji
Kanji convey meaning rather than pronunciation. They are mostly used to write nouns, and the stems for verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Here are some simple kanji to show you what they look like.
木 = “tree” or “wood”
速 = “quick” or “fast”
食 = “eat”
Kanji can be combined with other kanji to make compound words:
夕 (evening ) + 食 (eat) = 夕食 (dinner)
Or they can be used in combination with hiragana to produce verbs, adjectives, and adverbs:
食べる (taberu) = to eat
速い (hayai) = fast
速く (hayaku) = quickly
The History of Japanese Writing
A well respected writer and authority on Japanese once said: “Only one predominant language of one major nation remains today without clarification of its origins — Japanese”. While Japan uses Kanji which originated from China, the full origin of the spoken language itself is unknown. In fact, Japan didn’t have a writing system until it was introduced by Chinese around 50 AD, however most Japanese people remained illiterate until about the 5th century AD, (Japan’s literacy rate today is nearly 100%)! With the import of Chinese characters, Kanji started to be used to write Japanese words, and around 650 CE a writing system called Man’yōgana was invented that used Chinese characters for their sounds opposed to their meaning to represent Japanese. It was through Man’yōgana that Kana developed, which at the time was most often used by women who were denied higher education.
Studying Kana and Kanji
To study the Japanese writing system you should first learn hiragana and katakana. This should not take too long. When you have mastered these you are ready to study kanji. This will take longer. There are said to be over 50,000 kanji in total. Fortunately you don’t need to learn all of these! There is an official list of 2,136 jōyō (general use) kanji that children are taught in school, and these should be your prime focus. Although there are some study systems that claim you can learn the jōyō kanji in just a couple of months, such claims should not be taken too seriously. To learn to read kanji properly requires patience, dedication, and a steady study habit over the long term. It will depend on your own study habits exactly how long it takes, but two years is not an unreasonable length of time to spend learning to read Japanese.
Your Name In Japanese Katakana
Try our auto-conversion softwareWe will look at several strategies to figure out your name in Japanese. The best way is to ask a Japanese speaker how he/she would write your name in Japanese. If your name is fairly common, you’ll want to make your life easier and write it the way everybody else does. In the end however, your name is your own and will stay with you forever once you start using it in Japanese documents. So make sure you’re comfortable with it by being familiar with Katakana and what your name will sound like. If you have a fairly common first name, you can find the Japanese equivalent at this website:
http://japanesetranslator.co.uk/your-name-in-japanese/
Here’s a list of common surnames in Japanese.
1. Smith: スミス
2. Johnson: ジョンソン
3. Williams: ウィリアムズ
4. Jones: ジョーンズ
5. Brown: ブラウン
6. Davis: デービス
7. Miller: ミラー
8. Wilson: ウィルソン
9. Anderson: アンダーソン
10. Jackson: ジャクソン
In the highly likely event that your surname is not on this list, our Japanese staff will translate your name into Japanese.
Your Name In Japanese Ateji
Try our auto-conversion softwareJapanese has two alphabetic writing systems(Hiragana & Katakana) and one logographic writing system based on Chinese characters(Kanji).
Western names are usually written in Katakana, but it is becoming more popular for tourists to print their names in Kanji on T-shirts by using ‘Ateji(当て字:kanji used as a phonetic symbol)’. For example, the word "sushi" is often written with its ateji "寿司". Though the two characters have the readings 'su' and 'shi' respectively, the character '寿' means "one's natural life span" and '司' means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. Different Kanji can be used to express the same sounds as in the example below.
We use the algorithm called (1) RNN(Recurrent Neural Network), one of the most common machine learning method in the field of Natural language processing.
This is a Japanese name converter. Please be aware that Japanese kanji is a little different to Chinese kanji. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide Chinese name conversions.