Learn Japanese the Traditional Way
Japanese alphabets are called katakana and hiragana. The words are formed using the kana. There are 46 sounds in Japanese. There are represented using the katakana and hiragana. Sentences in Japanese are made up of both hiragana and kanji. Kanji is an alphabet borrowed from Chinese language. They are used mainly for nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems. You can use hiragana in sentences as particles. Words are more or less similar to English prepositions.
Katakana is used for words that are brought in to Japanese language from other languages. Furigana is used in Japanese language to indicate how to read and pronounce in Kanji. Kanji have different meanings and pronunciations. As per rocket japanese review it depends on the context. You will have a strong knowledge in furigana to avoid confusion while using the Kanji. Latin alphabets are widely used in Japanese language for acronyms. They are used for giving names and words in foreign language. This is for helping to read non Japanese speakers. It is also used as company or product names.
Japanese writers will use hiragana or katakana instead of kanji to bring attention to a word. They are also used to prevent confusion. Some people prefer to use hiragana or katakana over the kanji. Japanese language is traditionally written vertically and from right to left. But in computer s that usually types horizontally. This is to make it easy for printing and programming. Computer programs can work only horizontally. Japanese writings have begun in the fourth century. It is believed than Japanese aristocracy learned kanji to read Chinese.
A writing form called Kanbun was developed later. It is actually based in Chinese grammar. Kojiki, the earliest history of Japan was written using kanbun. The true form of Japanese writing evolved around 750 AD. The man’yugana made use of kanji. It was used for writing poems. Man’yugana actually branched off into two different systems. Hiragana and katakana alphabets evolved from man’yugana. Now there is no Japanese equivalent for many of the Chinese words. These words are used in Japanese with little change. Kanji ended up with two readings, the on-yomi and kun-yomi. They way it is used will depend on the context.