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Question about Japanese

Metalgear132

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Do the Japanese learn all the forms of written language in school?
 
I'm not sure what you mean by all the forms, but even counting all of the rômajis I'd say "yes." Of course, some kanji they learn outside the classroom (especially the 魚 kanji, I'd wager -- they probaby learn those at the sushi-ya).
 
What I was meant was if they learned Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana in school.

And what is used the most and more important to learn first?
 
If you're looking to learn Japanese, hiragana is a good first one, followed by katakana. Those're the basic essentials.
 
And I said "yes."

I'd say hiragana is the most important to learn first, as it's the one that's taught first both to Japanese children and to people learning it as a second language. If you know hiragana, then you can read anything that has furigana. Well, pretty much, anyway. There's bound to be some katakana words, but they're definitely fewer than hiragana ones. Anyway, next most important would be katakana, then kanji.

[Edit] Bah, beaten to the punch.
 
This is all in Japanese, but here's a list of the kanji that Japanese students learn in elementary school. It's broken down by grade level, from 1st grade to 6th grade. This may give you an idea of what the Japanese feel is most important to teach their children first in terms of kanji.

Other than that, ditto to everything said before. Hiragana is learned first and is the most important one to learn. Kanji is essential if you wish to be literate in the real world, but knowing hiragana will help you go quite a ways.

学年別漢字配当表 - Wikipedia

Katakana is generally used for words of foreign (non-Chinese) origin, and as such, it is the least important to learn...but that's relatively speaking, of course.
 
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High school graduates are expected to know about 2000 kanji, BTW.

Katakana is generally used for words of foreign (non-Chinese) origin
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what I was taught in my Japanese classes, but it's not true. Come here, and you'll see that katakana is used for many things.
furigana (pronunciation characters) over people's names,
sound effects in comics and on TV,
foreign words of course,
even regular words (if you watch enough TV, you'll notice that).

As for that last item, I have repeatedly asked my (Japanese) wife about why they use katakana so often on TV for regular Japanese words. The answer? I don't know.
 
Hi Glenski! It's not that it's not true so much as that what I said was not complete. You are entirely correct with what you are saying, but notice that all of the uses for katakana are special cases.

As for why they use so much katakana on TV for regular words, they often do it for emphasis or impact. Notice that when they are innocently having fun with a foreigner speaking Japnese, the "subtitles" will be in katakana. They will often do the same when someone speaks with funny pronunciation or they made a mistake, etc.
 
They do it for robot or machine speech too.

There are I believe four cases where katakana is used.

1. To dentote words of foreign, non-Chinese origin (as Mikawa said earlier).
2. To emphasize words (like italics in English).
3. For onomatopoeiac words.
4. To show non-standard or strange speech (like robots, funny accents, etc., like Mikawa said)

And maybe a 4 1/2. To write words with unusual/difficult kanji (like ﾃ?ﾃ偲･ﾃｶ -> ﾆ陳照辰ﾆ短ﾆ団). However, this may very well fall under the emphasis group, as they also use hiragana for this. Although, they do also use hiragana for onomatopoeia.

[Edit] Ha! I completely forgot about foreign names! They use katakana for readings of Chinese and Korean names, too, so I think it should probably be its own category.
 
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Mikawa,
I'm sick of so much written Japanese on TV. You can't see 1/2 of the screen. My Japanese wife doesn't agree with you about all the cases of people with funny dialects. Besides, with the plethora of Japanese written on TV, are there really that many people with funny intonation? It's a pretty common thing, so it's not that rare. Neither is manga stuff for sound effects. Heck, ALL of those examples are common!

Listen to people say "sugoi", "oishi", "umai", and other very common words. I am not Japanese, so I can't distinguish a bad accent/dialect from a clear one, but it just seem to me that there is far too much katakana there to be used for such things. Far too much PERIOD.
 
I think in those cases it's not to show funny accents, it's for emphasis. Using katakana for funny accents would be more like コレハホシイダケド、イイダカ？ (that is, everything written in katakana, not just one word).
 
Glenski said:
Mikawa,
I'm sick of so much written Japanese on TV. You can't see 1/2 of the screen.
Click to expand...
What shows do you watch? I'll be honest and say that I don't watch a lot of TV, but I've never thought it to be a problem.
My Japanese wife doesn't agree with you about all the cases of people with funny dialects.
Click to expand...
That's OK. People disagree with me all the time! I was referring to comedy shows where they might do that to someone with Tohoku dialect or something like that.
Besides, with the plethora of Japanese written on TV, are there really that many people with funny intonation?
Click to expand...
There are plenty of people with funny intonation, but you're right, they don't make it onto TV very much.
It's a pretty common thing, so it's not that rare. Neither is manga stuff for sound effects. Heck, ALL of those examples are common!
Click to expand...
I didn't say they were rare, though. I just said they were special cases.
 
Mikawa wrote:
What shows do you watch? I'll be honest and say that I don't watch a lot of TV, but I've never thought it to be a problem.
Click to expand...
Well, since I have a Japanese spouse, we have practically everything on TV. I try to avoid watching, but what can you do? Variety shows are the biggest problem, obviously. My wife also likes to watch the programs with travel features, cooking tips, and her favorite talento who roam around the country for various reasons. All have the text on screen.

I didn't say they were rare, though. I just said they were special cases.
Click to expand...
Ok, I didn't understand you. I thought special case and rare were the same.
 
Katakana is also widely used for animals (eg. ﾆ辰ﾆ談ﾂ、ﾆ値ﾆ坦ﾂ、ﾆ誰ﾆ筑ﾂ、ﾆ但ﾆ椎?) but not so much for categories of animals (窶堋ｳ窶堋ｩ窶堙?.

It's also often used for Japanese names when they choose not to write them in kanji.
 
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