Why is Katakana so essential?

I know Katakana is ''essential'' in modern Japanese for foreign words and such but I've never really understood why it exists. From what I can see Katakana and Hiragana syllable lists are identical, differing only in the symbols used.

So if I wanted to bring a foreign word over to Japan lets make up something ''Koba'' (not very english sounding I know..)

If its ''foreign'' to them they would have to write it in Katakana like so..

ﾆ坦 ko ﾆ弛 ba

But it can also be said using Hiragana symbols..

窶堋ｱ ko 窶堙 ba

So... Why the need for a completely seperate syllable table? It seems the sounds are indentical just with different symbols.. If you can make almost every foreign word or sound using Hiragana why the need for Katakana? Sounds which the Japanese physically cant make or dont use.. arent on Katakana tables soo just why...? This has been puzzling me for a while to be honest..

Why have print and cursive? Why have upper and lower case letters?

The story of how it came to be the way it is may be interesting and of some small comfort, but the question of "why" is pretty much pointless and unanswerable. Pointless because things are the way they are and we have no choice but to learn an extra set of kana. Unanswerable because there is no explanation which doesn't bring you right back to asking why the heck they can't just get along without it.

When learning Japanese and encountering its quirks you get used to just taking the quirks in stride. After all, it isn't as though the language is ever going to change to accommodate foreign learners. It's very much a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

For what very little it is worth....I never studied katakana.

Mike Cash said:

Why have print and cursive? Why have upper and lower case letters?

The story of how it came to be the way it is may be interesting and of some small comfort, but the question of "why" is pretty much pointless and unanswerable. Pointless because things are the way they are and we have no choice but to learn an extra set of kana. Unanswerable because there is no explanation which doesn't bring you right back to asking why the heck they can't just get along without it.

When learning Japanese and encountering its quirks you get used to just taking the quirks in stride. After all, it isn't as though the language is ever going to change to accommodate foreign learners. It's very much a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

For what very little it is worth....I never studied katakana.

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Good because I'm considering just not bothering with it. I can write in Hiragana now with bits of basic Kanji. Most foreign words can be produced in Hiragana soo would think if I ever did so, speakers would understand anyway. I guess I'll just katakana out and delve into the 60,000+ Kanji.. Far easier (given 200 years..)

I never said I didn't learn katakana; I said I never studied katakana.

I did learn them all. I picked them up through contextual clues.

I would suggest you buckle down and learn them. If something as minor as this is off-putting you may want to reconsider whether learning Japanese is for you or not. You've got tons of crap ahead of you a heck of a lot more difficult than katakana is. Learning the kana is just a pleasant stroll in the park compared to the double marathon worth of stuff that lies ahead.

If you plan on being able to say that you "speak Japanese" you MUST learn katakana. Many, many, many things are written in katakana - check out the Japanese aisle of a international food store, or CNN.co.jp for a little slice of how ubiquitous katakana is. And I completely agree with Mike (you should listen to anything a guy with over 5,500 posts says by the way) - if katakana is throwing a wrench in your spokes maybe you need to reconsider Japanese - it gets infinitely more complicated than katakana. Besides, many on'yumi of kanji are written in katakana to display the fact that their pronunciation comes from the pronunciation of the Chinese "parent" character.

Bite the bullet, it's worth it, trust me [us].

Coffeesan said:

...delve into the 60,000+ Kanji...

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What on earth makes you think you're going to have to learn that many? Are you planning on studying every form of every character ever used since writing started in China some 5000 years ago? If not, 2100 or so will suffice.

Your question is perfectly natural and is one that probably EVERY learner of Japanese has had. The problem is that there is no satisfactory answer and that even if there were there is no getting around having to learn a duplicate syllabary anyway.

If you're looking for a rational reason for the existence of both hiragana and katakana, might I suggest that you try transcribing sentences into just hiragana and then quickly pick out the gairaigo (foreign loan words). Katakana gives certain types of words an immediately recognizable visual distinction; it makes the word FAR easier to pick out of context and read. As you progress you will understand this better.

When I first went to Japan I had studied all three writing systems but didn't concentrate very much on Katakana. I was blown away by how much in Japan is written with Katakana. I felt very slow when I first arrived, it took about a month to navigate more comfortably.

Learn it or you'll probably feel very stupid.

Yes, it's the visual distinction that makes Katakana so helpful.

With native Japanese words, the Kanji and particles help you identify words and phrases, but borrowed words would blend right in if they were written in Hiragana. But because we have Katakana, you know that you can try to infer the original pronunciation and guess the word's meaning. Just keep in mind that borrowed words very frequently have nothing to do with the English originals, or might come from other languages like German.

But at least you know what you're looking at. Compare this to Chinese where *everything* is written in characters. The Chinese also like to create loanwords using the phonetic values of their characters, but in this case, there's no way to tell!

Japanese and Chinese seem so inefficent and complicated. I know its widely quoted that English is the worlds hardest language to learn but I think Japanese/Chinese is to be honest. 60,000+ characters, English we can form what ever we like using 26 characters + 10 number characters.

Been reading a lot of things and it seems Japanese children take till almost the 10th grade before their fluent in even the basics of their own language. Whereas in English by the age of 10 most kids can read and write and have a vocabulary big enough to express anything they wish. This started to make me think along another line.. ''stereotypically'' Japanese are regarded to be quite cold, emotionless and relatively shy (not saying I agree but its a common stereotype) I just wonder if the language has something to do with it. We use language to express ourselves and if a language is limited it limits the potential for expressing your feelings and ideas etc. Just wondering if anyone else has ever thought this? Even in fleeting prior to attaining more understanding of the language itself. I'm not insulting just debating a little..

The problem is that you're operating off of mistaken assumptions and inaccurate stereotypes.

And from what I see on the internet, an alarming number of English speakers seem to be eternally stuck at the age of ten when it comes to their ability to compose and comprehend written English, so I would be a bit more circumspect in offering them up as an example.

Also, you keep making the very common mistake of conflating the language with the orthography. Fluency in the language and competency in the writing system are two different things. At the very least you have a very misinformed notion about the ability of Japanese children to express themselves somehow being held back until they have been formally taught all the kanji used to represent the words they use. Just as we can use and pronounce words that we sometimes struggle to spell, Japanese children are perfectly able to acquire and use vocabulary items they have not yet learned how to write. They acquire a full grasp of the intricacies of syntax at a very young age, just as English speakers do. The notion that the complexity of the writing system would somehow hold them back from achieving fluency in the basics of the language is just absurd. How do you think Japanese people blind from birth ever manage to learn to speak? This is also tied in with the very common and very mistaken idea so many people have about learning Japanese from Japanese elementary school textbooks....people assume that in addition to limited vocabulary the books must also be written with extremely simple syntax, as though Japanese children were learning grammar forms in the same way as adult foreign learners of Japanese. They usually give up these books as learning materials when they find out the six year old Japanese kids are miles and miles ahead of them in terms of the syntax they are capable of handling.

Japanese doesn't use anywhere near 60,000 kanji. Fewer than 2,000 will get you through life just fine-n-dandy here. While English may have only 26 letters, the combinations used to represent the various sounds of English (with its screwy and often non-intuitive spelling and exceptions to rules) is said to approach a thousand.

And here I thought we had already addressed the issue of how many kanji are used commonly in Japanese.

There is nothing left of the horse but a skeleton severely eroded by whips.

Coffeesan said:

Japanese and Chinese seem so inefficent and complicated.

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Spoken like someone who has a lot to learn about the language. Actually Japanese is much more concise, if you ask me English is the language that needs to draw out and detail everything. Study up for a few years and get back to us on how you feel about this.

Coffeesan said:

Japanese and Chinese seem so inefficent and complicated. ...We use language to express ourselves and if a language is limited it limits the potential for expressing your feelings and ideas etc.

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I would argue the exact opposite for Japanese (not Chinese, though). Japanese has kanji, hiragana, katakana, and roman letters to be written with. That's an immense number of tools for expression. The more tools allows for more variety of nuance to be shown on the page.

Complicated? Certainly. Limited? Only by your imagination.

I don't know, man. Kanji/hanzi save lots of space on the page. What's the definition of efficiency?

My favorite example of how Japanese can very often be a highly efficient and compact language comes from once-upon-a-time when I was helping a Japanese learner in the US in IRC chat.

He wanted to say, "If you tell me what time your plane arrives, I'll go to the airport to pick you up."

His rendition was: もしもあなたはあなたの飛行機が何時に着くかを教えてくれれば、私は空港まであなたを迎えに行ってあげます

I pointed out that the entire functional gist of that message could more easily (and naturally) be expressed as: 迎えは？

All the rest was commonly understood and hence totally extraneous crap. All you're really asking there is if the guy needs a ride home from the airport or not. What time the plane arrives is irrelevant if he has already made arrangements. If he hasn't, then you can ask the time.

A: 迎えは?
B: 頼むよ
A: 何時？
B: 10時
A: 分かった

Japanese can be extraordinarily compact, but you have to have sufficient familiarity with the language. Coming from an English-speaking background, one of the skills we have to learn is how to recognize what communicative elements are essential and which ones can be left unsaid.

Of course, English can also be brief in such situations:

A: Need a ride?
B: Please
A: What time?
B: Ten
A: Gotcha

English is a language which tends to favor expression in (reasonably) complete sentences, and when learning Japanese we learn how to construct Japanese sentences. Learning how to cut down to mere sentence elements rather than complete sentences is a skill set which requires a good foundation in working with full sentences and experience with and exposure to colloquial Japanese. Unfortunately, unless one lives in Japan and has pretty extensive exposure to Japanese that skill set is hard to acquire.

The fellow in IRC chat had studied Japanese quite a bit, and was able to construct a perfectly fine (although highly unnatural) sentence in Japanese using some intermediate-advanced grammatical constructions. Unfortunately, his circumstances didn't provide him any opportunity to develop the skills necessary for paring his effort down to the bare essentials.

There's that too, but what I had in mind was the Twitter effect, I guess you could call it. I feel that you can do more with 140 Chinese characters than you can with 140 characters in English, so Chinese > Japanese > English, as far as the amount of text you can put into a Twitter message. What I'm going for with that is that given a sentence that's grammatically comparable in the three languages, it will take the least amount of space on the page when in Chinese, then Japanese, then English, since things have to be spelled out more with an alphabet. Take this title as an example of what I mean:

窶愬停?ｹﾅｾ窶佚･ﾅ?w窶督ｼ窶農窶ｹﾂｳﾅｽﾃｶ
Professor Emeritus at Tokyo University

The English clearly takes up more space on the page.

Mike Cash said:

Why have print and cursive? Why have upper and lower case letters?

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This is simple yet it is the best explanation I've seen for this. I asked a friend of mine before I came here and he only said "There isn't really any point to katakana". But seeing your explanation puts it all in perspective. That and knowing that Katakana helps to see foreign words puts enough perspective on it to make the entire concept valid.