Explaination of all the Japanese Alphabets

Learn Japanese from Koichi or another Japanese tutor!
http://www.edufire.com

There are four Japanese alphabets. Yes! That's right! FOUR. Even worse, they all do different things and have different ways of being used. This video is an explanation of all the Japanese alphabets: Romaji, hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• japanese
• alphabets
• kanji
• katakana
• hiragana
• romaji
• learn
• what
• difference
• koichi
• edufire
• tofugu
• tutor
• reading
• writing

[UltraDeb]

You're a natural teacher! Your tutorial was the first one that made the light bulb go on over my head. Plus, you're freakin' adorable. :-)

[Tehpillowstar]

"What's the sound does a video blogger make who's just lost all of his self-respect?"

...

me: LOL

[JanuaryBlack1996]

Wtf! four different alphabets?! sounds so hard :'( I guess I'll stick with Korean than, it's so much easier...*sulks away with all dreams of learning japanse shattered*

[patsybob]

No wonder Japanese kids are so smart their language is at least ten times harder! The only bonus I can possible see is the pronunciation is very phonetically regular, English is chaos when it comes to pronunciation, its not regular at all so words have to be learned and you cant assume what words sound like or how they are spelt. 

[jcali619]

The edufire website says no Japanese classes are available?

[lovelyslickyvixenLSV]

I only click because I saw Koichi's face. LOL

[Phavonic]

The punctuation looks tough though, there's no paces between letters as far as I can see.

[melbertchihiro]

This was made in 2008? God I should have met this guy earlier. Thanks for the explanations.

[VictoriaFTW66]

@ZTATION Both Japanese and Chinese use English keyboards and spell the words out i.e. using the word "いきます" you literally type using the English alphabet, ikimasu, on your keyboard however it comes out as hirigana and can allow you to change the words to kanji or keep it as hirigana as you see fit. I.e. 行きます。

[DzAlgeria1]

thats easy for me xD because i speak arabic

[3ikrimah]

thank you, can i mix the alphabets when i write japanese (in the same sentence)? if the english name i want to write has all its letters in hiragana, can i write it in hiragana not in katakana?

[Faliat]

I've been using UTAU to learn hiragana. Thing is to run it you'll need applocale or change your compulers non-unicode format to Japanese... Which can be pretty awkward with some programs. Still, give it a go if you can!