Hiragana vs Katakana vs Kanji: When to Use Each

Hiragana and katakana write the same sounds with 46 basic characters each, so the difference between them is the job they do. Hiragana writes native Japanese words and the grammar that holds every sentence together. Katakana writes words borrowed from other languages, foreign names, sound effects and emphasis. Kanji, the third script, carries meaning rather than sound. Learn hiragana first: you will need it in every sentence you read.

Hiragana vs katakana vs kanji compared

How to tell hiragana from katakana at a glance

Hiragana is the rounded one, katakana the angular one. That is easy to see and oddly easy to forget: plenty of learners who read both fluently still hesitate over which name goes with which shape. Two hooks settle it, and the second one also tells you what each script is for.

Curves or corners. Hiragana came from cursive brush writing, so it curves: すし. Katakana came from pieces cut out of Chinese characters, so it has corners: スシ. Both spell sushi. If you can't read any kana yet, borrow a hook from your own alphabet: the letter K is nothing but straight lines, and so is Katakana.

The names say it. Kata (片へん) means a fragment, and katakana are exactly that, fragments of kanji. Hira (平たいら) means plain or common, and hiragana is the everyday script. Put the shape together with the job and you have the whole rule in one line: corners for words from abroad, curves for native words.

Two more tells work on real text. The long bar (ー) stretches the vowel before it, and you will meet it almost only in katakana: コーヒー, ラーメン. And one pair beats every rule: へ and ヘ, both read he, are written so nearly alike that Unicode lists them as confusable. There, only the word around the kana tells you which script you are in.

The same word in hiragana, katakana and kanji

Which script a word appears in is often the writer's choice, made for a reader and an effect. Take the cat:

猫ねこ

the everyday adult spelling, in novels and the news

ねこ

a picture book, or a writer who wants the word to feel soft

ネコ

a field guide or a biology text, where species names go in katakana

Japanese also often has two words for one idea, a native one and a borrowed one, and the script tells you which one you are reading:

One real sentence, three scripts

Here is a line from Never a Day Off, one of the free N5 stories in our graded library. A man in a suit comes to Take's ramen stall every night and orders the same thing:

Look at the last row. 願ねがい is an everyday kanji, but a story written for N5 readers leaves it in hiragana, so which words get kanji depends on the reader as well as the word. Japanese also puts no spaces between words, and the switches between scripts do much of that work: ラーメン begins and ends exactly where the script changes. The rest of Take's ramen stall story opens in Yomimaru, with furigana, once you create a free account.

What hiragana is for

Hiragana is the glue. Every particle is written in it: は, が, を, に, の. So is every verb ending: in 食たべる (to eat), the kanji 食しょく carries the meaning and べる carries the grammar, and when the verb changes, only the kana move: 食たべた (ate), 食たべない (doesn't eat).

Hiragana also covers native words that are usually left in kana, such as ありがとう and ください, and it is the script of furigana, the small kana printed above a kanji to give its reading. If those are new to you, here is what furigana is and how to read it.

Textbooks for the first years of Japanese primary school, and many materials for foreign beginners, go further: they write almost everything in kana, with a space between words or phrases (分わかち書がき, wakachigaki). Without kanji, the reader needs the gaps to see where one word stops. That is how our free beginner stories written in hiragana are set, too.

Katakana is more than loanwords

Loanwords are the famous use: テレビ (TV), ラーメン, and your own name, if it isn't Japanese. But katakana does several other jobs you will meet as soon as you read real Japanese.

• Japanese companies. Suzuki is スズキ and Toyota is トヨタ, though both are Japanese names.
• Sounds. ピンポン is a doorbell, ワンワン a dog barking.
• Emphasis. スゴイ instead of すごい works the way italics do in English.
• Species names. Field guides and biology texts write animal and plant names in katakana: ネコ, not 猫ねこ.
• Voices. In manga, a robot or a foreign character may say コンニチワ instead of こんにちは.

Key idea

Katakana marks a word as standing apart from plain Japanese. When a native word you know turns up in katakana, the writer wants you to notice it.

Loanwords even have official spelling rules. Gairaigo no hyōki (外来がいらい語ごの表記ひょうき), a Japanese Cabinet notice from 1991, sets the long bar (ー) for long vowels and the small ッ for a doubled consonant, as in カップ (cup). It also sets combinations like ティ and ファ for sounds Japanese did not have, as in ティーパーティー (tea party) and ファイル (file).

Where kanji fits

Kanji are Chinese characters, and they carry meaning rather than sound. The official list of kanji for general use, the jōyō list published by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2010, holds 2,136 of them.

They stay because Japanese has a great many words that sound alike. こうえん can be 公園こうえん (park), 講演こうえん (lecture) or 公演こうえん (performance), and in writing the kanji tell them apart at a glance. Until you know a kanji, furigana fills the gap. That is why every kanji in the body of this guide carries its reading above it.

Which came first, hiragana or katakana?

Neither, cleanly. Both grew out of man'yōgana, Chinese characters used for their sound alone, and both took shape in the 9th century.

Katakana began with Buddhist monks. Reading Chinese scriptures, they wrote small pieces of characters beside the lines as reading aids, and those pieces became katakana. Hiragana grew out of handwriting: cursive forms of the same sound characters, simplified further in everyday writing at the imperial court. It was called onnade, "women's hand", and The Tale of Genji was written in it. Some of the oldest kana found in Kyoto are ink inscriptions on late 9th-century pottery, dug from the pond of a nobleman's residence.

For a thousand years, a sound could be written with several different kana. In 1900, Japan fixed one shape per sound for schools. Katakana kept an official role much longer: laws were written in kanji and katakana, and the first three books of Japan's Civil Code were only rewritten in hiragana and modern language in 2004.

Should you learn hiragana or katakana first?

Hiragana. You meet it in every sentence, it carries all the grammar, beginner texts are written in it, and furigana is printed in it. Katakana's basic set then teaches you no new sounds, only a second set of shapes for the ones you already know.

It pays off early. Four rows of hiragana, あ, か, さ and た, are enough to read a whole story: The Stinky Octopus (くさい たこ), seven short lines about an octopus with smelly feet. Beyond those rows it uses only three more kana: が and だ, which are か and た with two small ticks, and a small っ.

How much of Japanese is hiragana, katakana or kanji?

We counted. Across 285 articles in Yominews, the Japanese news section of Yomimaru, we sorted every character of the Japanese text into hiragana, katakana or kanji, leaving out punctuation, numbers and the furigana above the kanji. At JLPT N4 (144 texts), hiragana made up 54% of the characters, kanji 32% and katakana 14%. At N1 (137 texts), hiragana fell to 46% and kanji rose to 40%, while katakana stayed at 14%. As the level rises, kanji takes over words that beginner texts leave in hiragana, and katakana barely moves. It does swing from one article to the next, from 2% to 34% at N1, because a story about a video game is full of names. One caveat: these are graded texts written for learners, not native newspapers, and the N1 figures are the closest to native writing.

Which script would you use?

Eight words, each shown where you would meet it. Pick the script a Japanese writer would choose, then see why.