Hello! I understood this way: Kanji are characters that have an idea of their own and are unique in China. The Japanese use several of these characters, and have two readings of the same: reading Chinese and Japanese reading. The same kanji can be read two ways, or more, in different words. The hiragana is a simplification of Kanji made ​​by women so they could communicate and write their own stories. Katakana is also a simplification of kanji, but was created by Buddhist monks. The Romaji is how to write a Japanese word in Western characters. I hope have helped a bit.

私の名前はマイクミラー(Mike Miller)です。私は2011年にアメリカから来ました。 『私( I )』『名前( name )』『年( year )』『来( came )』--------Kanji 『の』『は』『で』『す』『に』『か』『ら』『ま』『し』『た』------Hiragana 『マ』『イ』『ク』『ミ』『ラ』『ア』『メ』『リ』『カ』------Katakana 『Mike Miller』 『2011』-----Romaji Thank you.

"I'm sorry if this is a stupid question." I shan't comment on that, but I do suggest you actually do some learning before posting generic questions.

hey eliot,,, what's wrong on her question? she asking what the different between kanji,hiragana katakana and romanji... so what's wrong of that?maybe you should review again and again on her to understand her question ok...

Its not a stupid question. If you don't ask, how will you learn? Romaji- is the pronunciation of the Japanese words(using the romanization[letters from the English alphabet]) i.e. Konnichiwa Kanji - are Chinese characters used in the Japanese language: 日本語 (Japanese) (nihongo)Some have the same meaning and others don't(but are of course pronounced differently) Katakana- This is used mainly for words borrowed from other languages, i.e. ケーキー (cake) (sounds like keh-kee) Hiragana - This is the simplification of Kanji. This is usually the first alphabet learned and taught to people learning Japanese. This is an example of hiragana: はじめまして(hajimemashite: nice to meet you)