Hiragana, katakana and kanji: what each one is for

Open any Japanese book, menu or website and you'll see three kinds of characters mixed together in the same sentence. That looks scary at first, but each script has a clear job, and once you know the jobs, the mix starts to make sense.

Here's one sentence that uses all three:

私わたしは コーヒーが 好すきです。

Watashi wa kōhī ga suki desu: "I like coffee." 私 and 好 are kanji, コーヒー is katakana, and は, が, き and です are hiragana.

Hiragana: the glue of every sentence

Hiragana is a set of 46 basic characters, each one a sound (a syllable like ka or mi). It's used for:

• Grammar words such as particles (は, が, を) and verb endings (〜ます, 〜ました).
• Native Japanese words that have no common kanji, or whose kanji is rare.
• Readings printed small above kanji, called furigana, in children's books and learner materials.

Japanese children learn hiragana first, and so should you. With hiragana alone you can already write any Japanese word, just not always the way adults normally would.

Katakana: words from other languages, and emphasis

Katakana has the same 46 sounds as hiragana, in sharper, more angular shapes. Its main job is words borrowed from other languages, plus foreign names:

It's also used for animal and plant names in science, for sound effects, and for emphasis, a bit like italics in English. Learn it second, right after hiragana. It's quicker the second time round, because you already know the sounds; the long dash ー simply makes a vowel longer.

Kanji: characters that carry meaning

Kanji came to Japan from China. Unlike kana, each kanji stands for a meaning as well as a sound: 山 is "mountain", 水 is "water", 日 is "sun" or "day". A small group of everyday kanji covers a lot of ground. Japan's official list of kanji for everyday use, the jōyō kanji, has 2,136.

Kanji solve a real problem. Japanese has many words that sound alike, and kanji tell them apart in writing. They also make reading faster once you know them, because the meaning jumps out before you've even sounded out the word.

Why one kanji can have several readings

Most kanji have at least two kinds of reading:

• Kun'yomi, the native Japanese reading, often used when the kanji stands on its own: 山 = yama (mountain).
• On'yomi, based on the old Chinese sound, often used in compound words: 富士山 = Fujisan (Mount Fuji).

Don't try to memorise every reading of a kanji in one go. Learn kanji inside real words, and the right reading comes with the word.

The order to learn them in

1. Hiragana, until you can read simple words without stopping. Many learners need a week or two.
2. Katakana, straight after. It's often quicker, because the sounds are the same.
3. Kanji, little by little, alongside everything else. Start with the ones you meet most: numbers (一, 二, 三), days (日, 月, 火…), people (人) and places (山, 川). For the JLPT N5 you need roughly a hundred.

Don't wait to "finish" kanji before learning grammar or speaking. Nobody finishes kanji; even native speakers keep learning rare ones. Learn the words you need, and pick up their kanji as you go.

Furigana: training wheels for kanji

When a text uses kanji a reader might not know, it often prints the reading in small hiragana above it, like the 私 and 好 above. This is furigana. It lets beginners read real Japanese before they know every kanji, and Hitokuchi uses it throughout: you can turn it up or down as you learn.