Hello!
Today I was asked by one of students about three types of characters in Japanese language.
I found a few great websites that summarize this topic very well.
Let me share the information here with you.
How Hiragana was made
It is well known that Kanji came from China a long time ago.
According to this website, sometime during the 1st century Japanese people were seeing kanji on Chinese currency already.
According to this website, during 7th Century many Japanese people use Kanji in their life.
But at the same time people realized Kanji was not enough to express all the detail of Japanese sentences.
Eventually people chose some Kanjis just for these sounds and these Kanjis were called Manyou Kana.
For Example, they picked this Kanji 安 for the sounds of “A あ”, not for the meanings.
Then Hiragana were made after simplifying each Manyou Kana.
Looking at the Kanji 安, people simplified this and change into a letter of あ.
They (安、あ) look alike, don’t they?
H
How Katakana was made
Hiragana was made by simplifying a Kanji. （安→あ）
On the other hand, Katakana was made by extracting a part of Kanji.
Please see the table below.
From 阿, the left part was extracted and made into ア.
As a native speaker, I didn’t really know those history of our characters even we use every day!
How many Kanji we use in Japan?
According to this website, 2136 Kanjis are considered as “Common-use Kanji”.
In elementary schools, 1026 letters are learned for 6 years.
In middle schools, 1130 letters are learned in 3 years.
Ha! Amazing! I can’t believe I learned that many in these schools…… hahaha
Hope these information will be helpful and entertaining for some people out there.
Thanks for reading!
Happy learning!
Mimoza@iroriocreations
