I want to go to Japan to write manga

From what I’ve learned, the 3 main ‘parts’ in Japanese are Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. I understand that Hiragana and Katakana have an alphabet, but I’m completely confused by how Kanji works. Is there an alphabet for Kanji or is it just characters representing words.

Is any one of these more popular or more dominant or is there no clear answer to this?

Also, does anybody know which I should focus on for moving to Japan to write manga (like which one is most commonly used to write manga)

Answer:

Kanji characters represent words or part of words. Each character has a meaning and its pronunciation can change based on what other characters it’s combined with.

Although all words can be written using hiragana, kanji helps to add meaning to text and also makes it more readable (assuming you know all of the necessary kanji).

For a little more detail on the difference between the 3 alphabets, check out this answer to a similar question here.

If you are interested in manga, you will likely have to learn all three alphabets. Although hiragana and kanji are seen most often in text, manga often uses a lot of katakana for emphasis and for representing sound effects.

History & Comments

spandexninja posted the question on 03/08/2010 Reply
kevin updated the answer on 03/08/2010 Reply

spandexninja said:

thank you very much for your help that cleared up my misunderstandings of the alphabets :)

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kevin said:

@spandexninja, no problem! glad I could help :)

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