Japanese Alphabets

Abstract

Broadcast Transcript: The Japanese are adept at hiragana. Also katakana. No. They're not Samurai methods of ritual suicide. They're alphabets. And very specific alphabets at that. Hiragana is a set of 48 phonetic symbols, known as a syllabary, that is used exclusively for words of Japanese origin. It was originally just used by women because Chinese characters or kanji was the writing system favored by the educated man. Eventually, however, hiragana was adopted by both genders. Katakana, on the other hand, is a syllabary used almost exclusively for foreign words. It was developed by Buddhist monks as a sort of shorthand and, in fact, the 51 symbols are bits taken from the more complicated kanji. So if you decide to learn Japanese, go ahead and commit hiragana and katakana. To memory, that is. No sword necessary. #ceas #hacker #japan