JP 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana
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See what you can spot! (cid:2241) (cid:2242) (cid:2210) hanbaagu hamburger. They are also used for emphasis (the equivalent of italics or underlining in english), and for scientific terms (plants, animals, minerals, etc. In fact, they were both derived from kanji which had a particular pronunciation; hiragana took from the chinese cursive script ( an a), whereas katakana developed from single components of the regular chinese script ( a. So that covers the origins the two kana scripts in japanese, and how we use them. Now let"s get on to the fun stuff kanji! Kanji the most formidable hurdle for learners of japanese! We said earlier that kanji is a logographic system, in which each symbol corresponds to a block of meaning . Block of meaning is the best phrase, because one kanji is not necessarily a word on its own.
