Japanese Language

In the 4th century, during a expedition to Korea, Japan rescued a King of Paikche from defeat by the King of Koguryo. As a thank-you gift, the king sent scholars with books containing something Japan didn't have at the time -- a written language. The book wasn't in han'gul, the modern Korean writing system, but in Chinese. Chinese and Japanese are very different spoken languages, so attempting to adapt Chinese to the Japanese language was a incredibly difficult task. The first step was to educate the Japanese scholars in written Chinese. The Japanese chose to disregard the phonetic sound of Chinese words, and just keep the meaning. This became kanji.

Anyone who has ever tried to learn written Chinese knows that it is a difficult and arduous task. It takes many years of study, and it was considered too difficult for women at the time to learn. A simplicification of the strokes in the Chinese characters became Hiragana, a cursive script. Women used this for writing diaries, personal correspondence, and in composing poetry and literature. It became referred to as "onnade" or woman's hand.

Male scholars, however, were having problem with kanji also. They sometimes didn't know the meanings of certain kanji, and created a shorthand form for taking notes quickly in class. This became katakana.

Until the Meiji Restoration, all three forms were used independently for writing the Japanese language. After the Meiji Restoration, kanji is used for nouns, verb roots, and names. Hiragana is used to fill in for the differences between Japanese and Chinese language -- for instance, to indicate tense, hiragana is used. Katakana is used for foreign words, describing sounds, or for names borrowed from countries other than China. The fourth way to write in Japanese is using romaji, or romanized alphabet.

Interestingly enough, even though I haven't studied or practiced Japanese for years, when I travelled to Tokyo, much of it came back. Even the few kanji that I learned came back. Today, if someone dictated me something in Japanese, I could probably write it in hiragana and katakana, but would have a hard time if I had to use kanji.