WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Hiragana is the most commonly used, standard form of Japanese writing. It’s used on its own or in conjunction with kanji to form words, and it’s the first form of Japanese writing that children learn. Written on its own and without kanji, it’s a bit hard to read and child-like, and can only be read with some effort.

Detailed explanation-2: -Katakana. Katakana () emerged around the 9th century, in the Heian period, when Buddhist monks created a syllabary derived from Chinese characters to simplify their reading, using portions of the characters as a kind of shorthand. The origin of the alphabet is attributed to the monk Kūkai.

Detailed explanation-3: -Kanji. Kanji was the first writing system used in Japan. It was introduced in the 4th or 5th century by way of the Korean peninsula at a time when Japan had its own spoken language but no writing system to go with it.

Detailed explanation-4: -Japanese consists of two scripts (referred to as kana) called Hiragana and Katakana, which are two versions of the same set of sounds in the language. Hiragana and Katakana consist of a little less than 50 “letters”, which are actually simplified Chinese characters adopted to form a phonetic script.