Relearning the Alphabet
An American Studies and Explores the Japanese Language
Normally, I write about stories, but today is a detour back to where stories begin. This article is about the alphabet.
English has one alphabet of 26 letters, with 5 vowels and 21 consonants. English uses this alphabet for everything. While there are rules for phonetics, a letter may appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. We have nice, neat little alphabet songs that are getting revised because kids are starting to think lmnop is one letter.
That’s it. English has a limited toolbox, but it uses those tools extensively.
As I have started learning another language, I have stopped taking the English alphabet for granted.
The US Department of State has a ranking list of languages based on how hard they are for Americans to learn. Category I, by far the easiest, includes languages closest to English, such as Spanish, French, or Swedish.
Category II is just a little trickier to get a hold of. Try German or Indonesian.
Category III is the largest, with “significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English.” We’ve got basically everywhere here, from Europe (Icelandic) to Africa (Hausa) and Asia (Thai).
None of Category III is easy. Category IV is “exceptionally difficult.”
The US Government has given four languages this significant title:
Arabic
Chinese (doesn’t say which one)
Korean
And, of course, the language I’m learning: Japanese.
The US Government is right. Japanese is exceptionally difficult. But that’s where the beauty lies.
I may be saying that solely because I’m obsessed with grammar and the way language is put together, but there’s beauty in encountering a system of speaking, writing, and thinking that’s so different from your own.
The grammar is totally different from English grammar; verb conjugation, formal and informal speech, and counting words come to mind. I still wouldn’t consider myself a Japanese speaker, so I’m not going to speak on this just yet.
But what I can discuss is the first thing any Japanese learner encounters: the alphabets.
Japanese Has Three Alphabets
Yes, you read that correctly. The Japanese toolbox runs far deeper than English.
The first alphabet is hiragana (ひらがな). It’s the first alphabet you learn because it’s the simplest and one of the most-used.
It’s got a whopping 46 letters. Each individual letter is sorted into one of five columns, based on one of Japanese’s five base vowel sounds. Start mouthing the hiragana to yourself, and you’ll notice a trend. Every single letter has a vowel sound, from the first column (a, i, u, e, o) to the S column (sa, shi, su, se, so) to the M column (ma, mi, mu, me, mo). Unlike English, there are no rules about having to include a vowel in a word because there are vowels baked into the alphabet itself.
Of course, the exception is the letter nn (ん). The only letter without a vowel, and the only letter that cannot start a word.
Alphabet number 2 is called katakana (カタカナ). It, too, has 46 letters, and those 46 letters sound identical to their hiragana counterparts. Yet they’re written differently.
They look a little boxy, don’t they?
Most commonly, katakana is used for foreign loan words or sound effects (which are very popular in the Japanese language). You may wonder why this requires a switch in alphabet.
Hiragana is rigid; katakana is designed to flex into a foreign tongue. You’re able to combine letters and sounds to produce something closer to a foreign tongue.
It’s a little tricky to learn two ways to write and use the same set of sounds, but it’s simpler to understand than you think. Exposure helps. Once you read Japanese, you’ll see them both.
This should prepare you for the big boss of Japanese alphabets: kanji.
Kanji (漢字)
Japanese’s first writing system, kanji terrified me at first glance. Its complexity and intriciacy are directly tied to its origin. At first, Japanese had no written form, so people started using the Chinese writing system, where every concept gets a unique symbol.
As a result, every Japanese kanji has multiple readings. You have a reading based on the Chinese sound associated for that symbol (on’yomi), and you have a reading based on the Japanese word for that concept (kun’yomi). Those readings need to be memorized, and Japanese elementary schoolers spend six full grades learning 1,000 of them. No wonder Jump uses hiragana to help read them.
Here’s where the beauty and intrigue of kanji lies.
Let’s talk about a basic kanji as an example. Say hello to 水.
On its own, it’s read as “mizu.” It means water.
Let’s put this in a word. 水泳.
That first kanji? The one we called “mizu” earlier? Well, now that it’s next to another kanji, it’s read as “sui.” 水泳 is pronounced “suiei,” and it means “swimming.”
It makes sense for the symbol for water to appear in the larger word for “swimming.” That’s because kanji aren’t just a string of sounds. They’re also a string of concepts that build a larger word.
It can’t get more on-the-nose than the word for vampire, 吸血鬼 (kyuuketsuki). Those familiar with kanji see the symbols for “suck,” “blood,” and “monster.” If that’s not a great definition for “vampire,” I don’t know what is.
I would even go so far as to say this concept-stringing reveals a bit about Japanese culture. Here’s my favorite kanji:
無
Read as “mu,” it means “no.” My first encounter with this was in my forays into Zen Buddhist philosophy, in the word “mushin,” 無心. This is a deep concept that can be translated as “no-mind.” I could write a whole article on mushin, but for right now, think of it as a very positive, enlightening form of emptiness that allows you to open yourself to all things.
I talked about kanji with an elementary school teacher. I mentioned that I liked this one. He immediately recognized it.
“Ah! From mugen!” 無限.
Mugen means “infinity.”
The West would see this as the decisive opposite of nothingness since infinity is everything. So much everything that it’s nearly impossible to put into words.
I asked around. I scratched my head. Why would “no” be in “infinity?”
The answer’s simple. “Gen” is limit. Mugen’s kanji literally mean “no limit.”
It’s a different way of seeing infinity. Someone with more knowledge of Japanese language and culture would have very smart things to say about what it means for infinity to be a hop, skip, and jump away from emptiness. For me, I walked around thinking this was pretty nifty and wanting to find out where else kanji could take me.
Hiragana and katakana are the easiest to learn, yeah. Kanji’s where the fun happens.
Don’t Get Discouraged; Get Excited
This might seem like a lot to take in, at first glance, but you’re not alone.
Japanese is a hard language. English is also a hard language, and Japanese people have trouble with it, too.
We can complain about kanji having multiple readings. When you’re done, think about why we have five vowels but twenty vowel sounds. Think about how one letter has three or four sounds depending on what other letters surround it. Think about silent letters, a concept completely foreign to Japanese. Imagine having to learn all of this for the first time.
Learning any language can be confusing and intimidating, but there’s beauty in the experience. Exploring a new language so completely different from your own is nothing short of a journey through a new way of thinking, entirely. There are moments where the going is slow, but there are moments around the corner that bring new knowledge.
Discovery can be almost childlike, like Kurt Vonnegut going to buy an envelope. Everything, both things you learn and things you already knew, seems bright and new. I could even say it makes you a better person, but I’m not that kind of Substacker, and I haven’t learned that much yet.
So go out there and learn a Category IV language. After all, now you know how the alphabet works.