Literature and the Arts

How is Japanese written?

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In the 3d and 4th cent. AD, the Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system of ideographic characters. Since Chinese is not inflected and since Chinese writing is ideographic rather than phonetic, the Chinese characters do not completely fill the needs of the inflected Japanese language in the sphere of writing. In the 8th cent. AD, two phonetic syllabaries, or kana, were therefore devised for the recording of the Japanese language. They are used along with the ideographic characters (or kanji characters) to indicate the syllables that form suffixes and particles. The direction of writing is usually from top to bottom in vertical columns and from right to left.

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Similar questions: When did the Japanese borrow the Chinese writing system? When were the phonetic kana syllabaries develoed in Japan? [ Hide these questions ]

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