Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana: Where Did They Come From? How Did They Form Japanese?
It is interesting how Japanese uses three alphabets. I wonder especially how these alphabets originally came about, as it seems somewhat unnatural, at least in my western perspective, to invent new characters for different purposes of the same sounds. That's a good question, and it goes back to early history of Japanese (and Japan). Ancient Japanese only communicated with listening and speaking. They didn't have anything for reading or writing. Things started to change in around the 5th century, when Chinese (especially Chinese writing system) was widely introduced to Japan. So Japanese basically had Kanji (literally Chinese characters) first. In this way, Chinese has been leaving deep influence to Japanese since that time. In fact, Sino-Japanese is often considered more formal or literary, just as latinate words in English often mark a higher register. (Just to notice: Japanese is still an independent language from Chinese. There is no way for anyone to master Japanese with me...
