How would you explain the need for three writing systems in Japanese to a person who only has had experience with one?
As an English speaking person who recently got into learning Japanese, I was intrigued by the use of the three writing systems: Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, however I could not truly understand why it is that way. I do know a bit about the history of these languages but that is not what I am interested in knowing; I wish to know what purpose these three separate systems serve in these current times to justify their existence of used simultaneously as compared to other languages having a singular writing system.
I tried to research a bit about this topic, but I couldn't get a satisfactory answer. I thought Hiragana was supposed to be used for native words and Katakana for foreign words, but this assumption didn't quite fit what I saw while reading manga or watching anime. I once saw someone say how Kanji was incredibly essential to the Japanese language, but I couldn't grasp the reason, considering how these Kanji characters were seen with their hiragana pronunciation as a side-note, I knew it wasn't worth just thinking about the explanations by myself, thus I thought of the idea of this post.
I wish to learn about the use of these writing systems from the perspective of a person who knows both Japanese and English well, is aware of how these systems are used in practical daily life and understands the trouble of someone brought up in an English medium, unable to grasp the significance of this system. This is my genuine curiosity and I do not mean to belittle the use of this system in any way.
This blog and the Wikipedia are good starting points. I don’t speak Japanese, but I do speak Chinese and have a background in linguistics so am peripherally aware of what’s going on so take that with as much salt as you need.
It’s useful to note that there were multiple attempts to go the “Oops! All kana” route or use romaji, but for a variety of reasons cultural, political, and linguistic, those didn’t pan out. Writing systems are deeply informed by a specific historical and social context, and what at first seems like irregularity or unneeded complexity, are often actually the traces of that history marked on the language.
As for issues like why katakana is used for non-foreign words too, I thinks it’s best to think of language feature less as strict rule followers and more like a species in its ecological niche. Katakana is very good at rendering foreign words in Japanese, but if it finds some unfilled gap that isn’t being better filled by some other feature people will use it to to fill that gap too. When the semicolon was developed in English no one imagined at the time we’d use it to do this ;-) but here we are.
I love the semi-colon example
;-)