When do you use hiragana, katakana and kanji?

[lowelllimpahan6185]

What if someone used mostly Kanji on their writing? Has that ever happened? Do some people write way more Kanji than others? Also, does writing in more Kanji seem more fluent?

Also, I noticed some words are just in plain hiragana and others are in Kanji. What if I wrote words that are supposed to be written in Hiragana and I wrote it in Kanji instead? Would that seem awkward?

[community.japanese]

lowelllimpahan6185-san,
it's actually a very good question.

In fact, we do have this exact problem of "using kanji too much", as a result of dependency on computers.
People tend to think more kanji seems more business-conscious and/or polite, which is completely a wrong idea.
They started using more kanji in a document or academic paper/report because it's just a matter of changing it with
tapping "space key". There're some words which are supposed to write in hiragana, so if you write such words
in kanji, you might give even wrong impression such as "trying hard to sound intelligent but showing you're not".
Also, the document with too many kanji is not very easy to read.
In any way, it's the best to keep balance and to know what you should write in kanji and what you should write in
hiragana, which is the smartest

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[lowelllimpahan6185]

Thank you so much for the information. I feel confident now when to use those symbols because the information came from the expert.

[community.japanese]

lowelllimpahan6185-san,
wow, thank you very much!! I'm glad I could help!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[kevenhuynh]

I have been studying Japanese for some time now and this is something that textbooks probably won't teach you (or maybe they do now). It will come to you over time. I know that's is not the best answer ever, but my reasoning is that over time you will see the same word many times and you will start to notice how often that word appears is Hiragana, katakana or Kanji.

Hiragana is the base alphabet can be used for all Japanese word.

Katakana, however, was created for foreign based words. It is uncommon for these foreign words to be written in Hiragana and I don't believe any kanji exist for them.
ex1. bread is パン(pan) in Japanese, but the origin of this word is Spanish/Latin
ex2. basketball is バスケットボール (basukettobooru) in Japanese and the origin is obviously America.
ex3. German is ドイツ(doitsu) in Japanese, but the origin of this word is Deutsch which is German for German.

Note: I sometime use katakana for Japanese people's name if I don't know the correct kanji (just to differentiate their name for regular text). Some Japanese people and tv shows will also use katakana in place of hiragana. I understand it, but can't exactly explain why. It is a kind of humor I guess.

Kanji is a borrowed alphabet from China. It is used to differentiate Japanese homonyms, ease reading (for Japanese people) and other historic reasons that I just don't know

ex. はし(hashi) has several different meanings such as bridge or chopsticks, but it can be distinguished by 橋=bridge or 箸=chopsticks

ex2. わたしはにほんごをべんきょうします。(I will study Japanese)
私は日本語を勉強します。This is shorter than the original and is much easier to read (if you already know the kanji).

I hope this make sense, but feel free to ask me questions if you are confused about certain parts.

Japanesepod,
Please correct me if there are not misleading information above. Thanks!

[community.japanese]

kevenhuynh-san,
no you didn't mislead at all!! It's all brilliant information; thank you very much!!

Interesting and very correct point about writing all in Hiragana!
We often use the extreme example for that (you might laugh at this):
ははははいしゃにいきました。
First 4 は doesn't mean "hahahaha"
This is,
母は歯医者に行きました。 (My mother went to see the dentist.)
It's definitely easier to find out the meaning when you write with kanji, right?

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[kevenhuynh]

奈津子さん、
I've heard of this example before. It's a very well known example, but I forgot about it when I was writing my explanation. It is a much better example thank you for sharing it.
Actually from your comment before I am unfortunately one of those that rely on computers to convert to kanji. This is the reason why I can read more kanji than write. It is difficult for me to learn how to write kanji because there is no reason for me to write them in everyday life so I end up forgetting. (I sure that everyone even yourself will agree that hitting the spacebar is easier )

[community.japanese]

kevenhuynh-san,
yes, I agree
I'm not TOO young, but I'm those who have been using PC for a long time and becoming more and more lazy
enough not to hand write anything....naturally as a result, I can read kanji much more than writing them correctly
When I write memo, for example, if I can't remember some kanji, I easily escape and write it in hiragana
I know that's bad....I have to study kanji too Both reading and writing!!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[makarlacastro3672]

I'm Karla Castro, an IT Student of Technological Institute of the Philippines- Quezon City, we are working on an application called "Japanese (Hiragana) to Baybayin Translator", can we use your Japanese Core Word list for our project? Is it validated? Please response. Thank you so much.

Karla Castro
Student, Philippines

[pgbowman]

Hi Karla Castro,

Thank you for your message. Could you send me an email at ?

Peyton