Learn your kana!
Note: Except "Hiragana" and "Katakana", you don't need to know Japanese concepts' names.
In the Japanese writing system, Katakana and Hiragana independently represent all the sounds of the Japanese language.
Hiragana are used to note the grammar: particles, prefixes and suffixes, the endings of verbs, nouns and adjectives.Some very common words are written in hiragana, even when there is a kanji. For example, for the pronoun “I”, we can find both 私 and わ た し (the pronunciation is the same, watashi).
The use of katakana is more restricted: they are mainly used to transcribe names of foreign origin. For example, ナイフ (naifu), from the English word "knife". Other uses of katakanas include onomatopoeia, animal names, and even the emphasis of a message.
When you write kana, you need to follow different stroke orders rules. You can find them in this article
Dakuten and Handakuten derived from kana, and were created to make new sounds. Not all kana have a Dakuten/Handakuten versions.
Sokuon involves the use of a small “tsu, つ” to double a consonant in a word. Called gemination in phonetics, this results in a clipped sound, or slight pause, when pronouncing the word in Japanese. It’s not the easiest pronunciation point to get at first, but you will get the hang of it the more familiar you become with the language.
When writing in romaji, you use a double consonant, while in kana you will use the small “tsu” (っ for hiragana and ッ for katakana) in place of the repeated consonant.
Example : 日本 (にっぽん), "nippon" in romaji, "Japan".
These are words that have long sounds, resulting in a lengthened pronunciation in Japanese.
When writing, there are some rules that come into play:
Long vowels ending in a あ, i い, u う are written with an extra vowel of the same sound. For example, long vowels ending in あ add on an extra あ.
→ E.g. okaasan お母さん・おかあさん(mother).
Long e え sounds are followed by an extra い or え.
→ For example, eiga 映画 ・えいが(movie) or oneesan お姉さん・おねえさん (older sister).
Long vowels ending in o お are followed by an extra う.
→ For example, ohayou おはよう (good morning).
An exception to this is some words are written with a double お, such as in ooki 大き・おおき (big).
Sometimes you might see the extra vowel omitted and instead, the word will be written with a macron over the long vowel. For example: okāsan, ohayō. There is no real rule around that and much of it comes down to preference.
In katakana, the long vowel is represented by a dash instead. For example: koohii コーヒー (coffee), suupaa スーパー (supermarket).
It is possible to combine several kanas to form more complex syllables: mya, sha, cha, nya, hya… To do this, we take a kana ending in an i (ki, shi, chi…) and add the one of the following kanas: ya (や / ヤ), yu (ゆ / ユ), yo (よ / ヨ), this time again in a miniaturized version. We will therefore have for example: き + や = き ゃ (kya) or ミ + ヨ = ミ ョ (myo).
Katakanas allow you to make even more complex combinations to transcribe foreign sounds. For example: テ ィ (ti) or デ ィ (di).