Friday, September 23, 2005

Japanese Wackiness, part 19.3 in a continuing series

Normally, when I talk about Japanese wackiness, I'm using Japanese as an adjective, but this time, I'm referring to the language. In Japanese, there are as many as 4 ways to write/spell something:

  1. Kanji - this is the Chinese characters (pictograms)
  2. Hirigana - this is the "spelling" used for native Japanese (Chinese words)
  3. Katakana - this is the spelling used for foreign words and foreign names
  4. Romaji or Romanji - this is the transliteration of Japanese words into English characters, like domo, Ueno and sushi


Kanji is an interesting set of characters, and when you break them down, you can totally see why the Kanji for something is the way it is. For example, electricity denki is made up of the character for rain over a character for "kite". The word for angry okuru starts with the character for "oka" or woman! (I wonder why?!?!?)