Siany
Kanji, Hiragana or both?

Can certain words be written in both Hiragana and Kanji?

Am i able to spell tiger like とら or does it have to be 虎

Would it be prounouced differently? 

Jun 30, 2015 2:18 PM
Comments · 3
2

All words can be written in hiragana (and the pronunciation doesn't change).  Some words use preferentially hiragana even though the word exists in kanji as well.  When communicating with children, people will simplify by writing more hiragana.  In some cases the kanji is very complicated to write and has become oldfashioned.  Other times writing something in hiragana gives a different "feeling" to the word, makes it less formal, softer.

 

But you'll run into trouble really quickly if the kana is all you know to write.

 

1.  Since there are no spaces in between words, sentences would be very hard to read if they were only in kana because how do you know whether any syllable is a particle, a conjugation, or part of a new word?  It'd be stop and go, figuring it out slowly.  Never mind, you say, you'll just add spaces.  Alright.  But:

 

2.  Many words sound the same but have different meanings (homophones) and if they're also spelled the same (homonyms), you'll have to guess:

髪 pronounced かみ means hair

神 pronounced かみ means god

紙 pronounced かみ means paper

Often you can guess the meaning from context, though that won't work 100% -- it will, however, reliably slow you down while you're figuring it out.

 

3.  Kanji-kana mixed texts are easier and faster to read than kana-only.  New word beginnings are easy to detect because hiragana is mostly used for inflectional endings and particles, so as soon as you see the next kanji, you know it's a new word.  Just like in English where we don't actually need to read every letter in a word, but first and last letter plus the general shape will do, proficient Japanese readers can just glance at a kanji and know its meaning.

 

 

July 1, 2015
1

Alls word can be written as either and there is no difference in pronunciation. There are preferences and tendencies to use Kanji for some words and Kana for other words.

 

For example:

 

たくさん can be written as 沢山, but I tend to see the former.

まで can also use 迄, although, I have never seen it used!

 

It will depend on the context. In a book for children kana will be used (sometimes kanji have furigana), whilst newspapers and books for adults will use more kanji.

June 30, 2015

You may find this interesting, sometimes you can write common animal names in all four writing systems.

 

For example cat can be written as:

 

ねこ

ネコ

 

 

July 6, 2015