Writing

Contents

1 Writing
2 The difficulty of writing Japanese
3 Japanese character
4 Japanese Kanji

The difficulty of writing Japanese

Japanese may be the most difficult language in the world to “write”. This is simply because of the large number of characters and the complex rules for using them.(For more information on Japanese characters, please click here.)

Here is a summary of such difficult parts of writing Japanese.
1，Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji are mixed together.
2，Kanji is too difficult.
3，Avoid direct expressions.

Japanese character

Too many letters to remember.

It is said that the number of characters used in daily Japanese is about 3,000. (700 of these are kanji characters for people’s names.)
Therefore, the number of characters in daily use is 106 each for hiragana and katakana. The number of kanji is about 2,000.
In N1, students are required to memorize almost all of these characters. In addition, there are several ways to read kanji, so the amount of kanji to memorize is enormous.
This large number of characters may be one of the reasons why Japanese is said to be a difficult language to learn. These are factors that make it difficult to learn a language in a short period of time.

Japanese Writing Concept

Japanese are said to be poor at writing essays, even by global standards. This is probably because their grammar is ambiguous and sentences are formed in various ways. There is a rule that Japanese people keep in mind when writing easy-to-read sentences.

1. Only write the subject and predicate first.
2. Use simple words to modify the subject and predicate.
3. Break up long sentences.

Determine the subject and verb

The first step is to determine the subject and predicate.
Let me explain with a few examples.

私は行った。（I went)

The next step is to determine the modifiers.

私は東京タワー行った。（I went to Tokyo Tower.)

So what should we do if this sentence is too long?

私は前からずっと行きたかった東京タワーに昨日行ってきた。
（I went to Tokyo Tower yesterday, which I have wanted to visit for a long time.）

It’s a little confusing, isn’t it? This is because there are multiple subjects and verbs. So, we will make this into two sentences.

私は東京タワーに行ってきました。そこにはずっと前から行きたかったのです。
（I went to Tokyo Tower. I had wanted to go there for a long time.）

The longer the sentence, the more difficult it becomes to understand the meaning. Therefore, when writing sentences, try to keep them short. Just be aware to write one matter in one sentence.

Japanese Kanji

Too many letters to remember.

What you can do by learning kanji

The writer is Japanese and thinks Kanji is a very wonderful thing. The reason for this is that one can create an image just by looking at a kanji. Here is an example.


①海外（overseas）
　海（Ocean）外（Outdoor）

②道場 (hall used for martial arts training)
　道（The way）場（Place）

When two or more kanji characters are gathered, don’t you know what kind of thing you want to indicate? Even if you don’t know how to read it, you know what it means. I think this is the characteristic of kanji. Because there are so many characters, there is an image that each kanji has. By using them in different ways, I think the clarity of reading is also improved.
When you think about it, don’t you also understand the meaning and complexity of kanji? Complex kanji have detailed images, which makes them difficult to write.

How Japanese people remember Kanji characters

Japanese people begin to learn simple kanji when they enter elementary school. However, many adults can read kanji but cannot write them. They also break down kanji they do not know how to read and look them up on the Internet.

Let’s look at one example.

①協力（cooperation）
This "力（Chikara）" means power.
The left "十（Juu）" means ten.
The power of ten people combined together represents the power of everyone working together.

If you are studying Japanese, can you imagine what it would be like? Does it become a little easier to remember? Since many kanji are made up of combinations like this, it will be easier to remember them if you remember their arrangement and meanings.