There are three kanas, or writing styles, in the Japanese language. These are the styles of Hirigana, Katakana, and Kanji, which are explained below.
As mentioned above, there are three writing systems in the Japanese language: hirigana, katakana, and kanji. Hirigana is a more cursive, round style of writing. It evolved from kanji, the traditional Chinese writing style introduced to Japan by China during the Song Dynasty. Before this time Japan had no formal writing system. Kanji is a style of writing that requires substantial understanding of stroke order, in addition to other factors, and is taught to Japanese students starting from elementary school. There are more than 5,000 basic kanji characters, some of which were created later in Japan (and so are not original Chinese characters). In television shows, comic books, and other forms of text media, tiny hirigana symbols are commonly written atop kanji for the sake of individuals (such as children) who might not recognize all kanji characters yet. Hirigana is used for traditional Japanese words such as sakana, fish, and enpitsu, pencil. There are 46 unmodified hirigana symbols (we'll get into this later). Katakana, the more angular, straight-edged style of writing, was developed after significant Western influence entered Japan. To sum it up, Japanese felt that all of the foreign terms such as "tomato," "door," and "bed" should not be written with the traditional kanji or hirigana systems and thus mixed into the original language. In this way katakana became the third writing system used for foreign terms.
Don't get confused; hirigana and katakana may be different writing systems, but for every hirigana symbol, there is a katakana symbol that is pronounced exactly the same way. In other words, both systems contain the same number of characters and the same number of sounds, but are just written differently to make the distinction between native and foreign words.
Each character in the Japanese phoenetic alphabet has a specific pronunciation. Think of it not as an alphabet, but more as a chart of kana characters. For example, a + so = aso. There is no individual "s" character. This brings us into the next section.
In the hirigana/katakana chart, there are 11 rows of characters. The first row consists of the vowels, a, i, u, e, and o. Say, "Ahh, ee, oo, ehh, ohh." Each character under a - in other words, in the a column - has a consonant beginning and ends with a. Please refer to the chart at the bottom of this page if you find yourself confused. So in the a column there are the symbols for ka, ma, and ya, not exactly in that order. This goes for all the vowel characters. Now you have to know that there is a certain order to the chart. It isn't just mixed up and random; symbols in each row all start with the same consonant and end with a, i, u, e, o. For example the "k" row consists of ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. The order is such: Vowel row, K row, S row, T row, N row, H row, M row, Y row, R row, and finally the W row.
There are exceptions. Not every row is made up of five characters ending with the vowel sounds. The Y row has only ya, yu, yo. This means that yi and ye simply do not exist in the Japanese language, and are not spoken. Similarly, in the W row, there are only wa and wo, which is sometimes pronounced with the "w" sound, but is also pronounced simply as "o." Now you may be confused and wondering why there are two o's in the chart. The reason is because while the vowel o is used within words, the w-o wo is used alone and is a particle, which we will discuss later.
Now I'm going to reveal my personal system for remembering the order of the rows. Keep in mind, I made it up myself, and I don't remember telling it to anyone. So you should feel very special and gifted right now...Anyway, it's a weird-sounding yet effective anagram:
Knighted
Giant
Snakes
Zoom
Through
Dense
Nocturnal
Hibuscus
Bushes;
Probably
Made
You
Really
Wild.
Makes a lot of sense, right? Yeah, anyway, if it doesn't work for you, make up your own!! It's free and easy, like last Monday's school milk. Or not.
You're going to ask it, so I'm going to explain it. *assumes whiny, nasal voice* "Webmasterrrr, why are there letters for rows other than the eleven you mentionnnneeeed??" The answer, my dear students, is that certain rows (K, S, T, H) can be modified to form OTHER SOUNDS!!!! The K, S, T, and H rows are simply the primary rows, meaning that they are the original and unmodified characters which you can modify to make different sounds. Fascinating, isn't it?? A simple way of saying this is that you can add little symbols to the top-right corners of the characters in these rows to "soften" or "harden" the sound.
To soften the sound of a character, you add a "denden," which looks almost exactly like a quotation mark ("), except that it's not a quotation mark. It's a denden. By adding a denden to the top-right of a K row character, you soften its sound and it becomes a "g-" character instead of a "k-" character. Think about it; "guh" is sort of just "kuh" with less emphasis on the consonant, isn't it? This is how you modify characters, even if it doesn't seem like the sound is getting "softer" to you. Likewise any S row character modified with a denden becomes a Z character, a T row character and a denden makes a D row character, and an H row character plus a denden equals a B row character. This again brings us to another special trait of Japanese kana: the H row.
The H row can be both "softened" and "hardened" in sound. It is the only row that can do this. You already know that h- + " = b- (ex: ha + " = ba). Now you will learn that by adding a circle to an H row character, you are "hardening" the "h" sound into a "p" sound. So h- + º = p-. This little symbol looks exactly like a degree sign - it even goes in the same place! So there! In case you haven't figured out already, the other rows in the hirigana/katakana chart (Vowels, N, M, R, W) cannot be modified. They simply exist as they are and in no other way. Think about it: how would you "soften" an N row character? A W row character? You can't, really, so this rule also makes sense.
The last character in the chart is the only consonant ending the Japanese language has: n. This is pronounced with a long "n" sound (nnn.). n is used in the middles and endings of words such as hoNtou, kaririN, and rameN. The n symbol makes up the eleventh row.
Next on the syllabus is combining characters. I'm tired and I've already increased this page's content by probably around 300%, so I'm going to watch Inu Yasha until I feel more relaxed. Catch you on the flip side!! In the meanwhile, why don't you take a good look at the hirigana/katakana chart below and start memorizing the characters? You'll be able to find memorization tips on this web site at a later date.