So, I'm learning Japanese now... I have my reasons for it, and since I already know a little, I thought, 'why not try and learn it all?' It's not easy, though... Japanese has over 40,000 kanji characters, along with over 100 letters in both the hiragana and katakana alphabets.
Hiragana is used by the Japanese for words that are found in Japanese. Katakana is the different style of writing the same sounds, but it is only used for foreign words (such as names, places, signs, and more recently, computer terminology). Here's a small example:
私の なまいいは さやこです。 This says, "My name is Sayako"... it's all hiragana, except the blue writing, which is the kanji character for "I/my". Sayako is one of my best friends, she lives in Japan! :)
私の なまいいは キミです。This says, "My name is Kimmy". Here, there is kanji, hiragana, and also katakana in orange, since my name is considered foreign in Japan.
