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The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis.
[16] [17] [18] Until the 9th century, Japanese language texts were written in Chinese characters via the man'yōgana writing system, generally using the phonetic value of the characters. Since longer passages written in this system became unmanageably long, man'yōgana was used mainly for poetry while classical Chinese was reserved for prose.
Japanese writing system terms (2 C, 25 P) Jindai moji (3 P) K. Kana (1 C, 69 P) Kanji (3 C, 65 P) R. Romanization of Japanese (7 P) Pages in category "Japanese ...
Before the introduction of kanji from China to Japan, Japan had no writing system; ... Light novels, a Japanese type of young adult novel, ...
Vertical writing (tategaki 縦書き) is still commonly used in Japan in novels, newspapers and magazines, including most Japanese comics and graphic novels (also known as manga), while horizontal writing is used more often in other media, especially those containing English language references. In general, dialogue in manga is written vertically.
The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on Portuguese orthography.It was developed c. 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Anjirō. [2] [citation needed] Jesuit priests used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese orthography.
The classical Japanese language (文語, bungo, "literary language"), also called "old writing" (古文, kobun) and sometimes simply called "Medieval Japanese", is the literary form of the Japanese language that was the standard until the early Shōwa period (1926–1989).
Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな, IPA: [çiɾaɡaꜜna, çiɾaɡana(ꜜ)]) is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji). [1] [2] [3]